And yet, neither this nor any of the other precedents cited above, are sufficient to give certain moral sanction to the practice of interest-taking by those persons who would continue to save if interest were abolished. All the acts of legal authorisation that we have been considering relate to practices which are beneficial and necessary to society. Only in such cases has the State the moral authority to create or annul property rights. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the legal authorisation of a certain rate of interest made that rate morally lawful simply because this legal act gave formal and authoritative testimony to the social utility of interest-taking. The State merely declared the reasonableness, and fixed the proper limits of the practice. The beneficent effect of interest-taking upon society was its underlying justification, was the ultimate fact which made it reasonable, and which gave to the action of the State moral value. Had the taking of interest on loans not been allowed the bulk of possible savings would either not have been saved at all, or would have been hoarded instead of converted into capital. And that money was badly needed in the commercial and industrial operations of the time. Hence the owners of it were in the position of persons who regarded saving and investing as a sacrifice for which interest was a necessary and proper compensation. To-day, however, there are millions of persons who would continue to perform both these functions without the inducement of interest. Therefore, the public good does not require that they should receive interest, nor that the State should have the power to clothe their interest-incomes with moral lawfulness. Inasmuch as the State is not certain that the abolition of interest would be socially expedient or practically possible, it is justified in permitting the institution to continue; but it has no power to affect the morality of interest-taking as an individual action. _How the Interest-Taker Is Justified_