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52
1 1
(4)
Fee in receipt
of interest
[4] [Fee ... in receipt of ... Interest...]
The same reasons which apply to the cases of
purchase and exchange, apply to the case of payment
of interest, but with increased augmented force.
To refuse payment Not to admitt of payment of interest in any instance,
in the instance of a note even of the smallest magnitude
— would be a violation of the principle of
the engagement: it would destroy altogether be altogether destructive of the value
of the class of notes so distinguished, and render
them incapable of being passing being made to pass in exchange
for Notes of the higher superior classes. [+]
[+] A barren paper
would as much be
essentially incapable
of entering into forming part of the
same system with
an interest-bearing
paper: the circumstance
which one
in the one case constitutes
the value
of the paper and
furnishes the inducement
to accept it,
would be altogether wanting.
If it did not
promise interest, it
would promise nothing
at all: interest principal
it would not
promise; for in that
case it would be a
paper of quite another sort
Nobody would accept
it as cash, unless
the money promised
were promised to be
paid on demand. Government
were it to do
this could be setting up
the Banking trade: and
the measure, to say nothing of its impropriety would be a totally different one from that which is intended.
To put it in the power of every individual
possessed of a sixpenny note or a shilling note
to call upon the a Local Annuity Office for
the payment of the farthing's of interest when
due, and this for any number of such notes and
without a fee, would be to expose the Officer to
a stil greater degree of that vexation which in a
less degree it has already stil been appeared might be
rendered intolerable.
There remains, as the only expedient course that can be
employed taken, the requiring from every person who applies
for payment a fee, but that fee, as in the former case,
to be as it can be and at the same time afford a
tolerably adequate recompence for the trouble attendant
on the service for which it is required: and for this
trouble it has already been proved from the example
of the Local Penny Post Office, that the smallest a sum
corresponding to the smallest coin extant would not be
too small and inadequate.