'A Freelander who thought so,' said Mr. Ney, 'must have a very imperfect knowledge of what is to his own advantage. The interest paid by foreign debtors can in no respect compare with the advantages offered by employment of the money in Freeland, those advantages being, as you know, equably distributed among all the members of our commonwealth. At the end of last year we had altogether thirty-four milliards sterling invested. The calculated profit of these investments amounted to seven milliards; therefore, more than twenty per cent. Moreover, thanks to these same investments, every Freelander enjoys gratuitously the electric light, warming, the use of railways and steamships, &c., advantages the total value of which would very nearly equal the remunerative production effected by our investments. Anyone can now calculate how much more profitable Freeland investments of capital are than foreign ones. Moreover, the two and a-half milliards, of which friend Clark spoke, is a large sum in European and American financial operations, and it has actually contributed towards very considerably lowering from time to time the rate of interest in all the foreign money-markets; but when this amount is compared with Freeland finances, the investment of it abroad is seen to be simply an insignificant and harmless whim. This large sum brings in, at the present rate of interest--you will understand that Freeland savers invest merely in the very best European or American bonds--about thirty-four millions sterling; that is, not quite the two-hundredth part of the national revenue of Freeland. And there can be no doubt that this whim will--for us--lose much of even its present importance as Freeland continues to grow; for the competition of our capital has already reduced the rate of discount of the Bank of England to one and a-quarter per cent., and raised the price of the One and a-Half per cent. Consols to 118; hence there can be no doubt that a large flow of Freeland savings to Europe and America must, in a near future, reduce the rate of interest to a merely nominal figure. That this whim of investing capital abroad will altogether vanish as soon as foreign countries adopt our institutions is self-evident.' I now addressed to Mr. Clark the question in what way the Freeland commonwealth guarded against the danger of _crises_, which, in my opinion, must here be much more disastrous than in any other country.