The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 69
French are More Patriotic
French are More Patriotic
than the English—and for a very good reason. A Frenchman can purchase Government bonds called rentes for as small a sum as £4 each, upon which he receives interest—he therefore feels that he is somebody, and that he has a stake in the progress of his country. In 1886 a £20,000,0000 French loan was called for—it was subscribed twenty-one times over; there were, in all, 247,000 subscribers, the greater number of whom were for 100 francs—£4—all of whom received their full allotment. It is small wonder that the French are patriotic when over 5,000,000 are small landholders, and many millions hold the bonds of their country. Fancy, what Australian workers might become if thus recognised by an oligarchy no longer supercilious. The notes issued by the Government would form the currency of the country, and, as agents in production, like the marked pebbles of the Pharaohs, they would distribute the rewards of labor to him who had earned them. Mr. Macandrew's Bill provided for the conversion, on demand, of interest-bearing bonds into notes not receiving interest and vice versa. A well-regulated State Bank of Issue should so far minimise the fluctuation of value as to assure a borrower of money that the interest agreed upon, as it became due, and the principal sum, when to be repaid, should be met by the sale of about the same quantity of produce of live or dead stock that the money borrowed would have purchased at the time of the loan. Everybody will know that under the existing system of a forced expansion of the currency at one time and the