This being so, the paramount interest of all (in an economical point of view, and rightly understood) is to favour the rapid creation of capital. But capital, if I may say so, increases of its own accord under the triple influence of activity, frugality, and security. We can scarcely exercise any direct influence on the activity and frugality of our neighbours, except through the medium of public opinion, by an intelligent communication of our antipathies and our sympathies. But as regards security we can do much, for, [p211] without security, capital, far from being formed and accumulated, conceals itself, takes flight, and perishes; and this shows us how suicidal that popular ardour is which displays itself in disturbing the public tranquillity. Let the working-classes be well assured that the mission of Capital from the beginning has been to set men free from the yoke of ignorance, of want, and of despotism; and that to frighten away Capital is to rivet a triple chain on the energies of the human race. The ‹vires acquirit eundo› may be applied with rigorous exactitude to capital, and its beneficent influence. Capital, when formed, necessarily leaves disposable both labour and the remuneration of that labour. It carries in itself, then, a power of progression. There is in it something which resembles the law of velocities. This progression economical science has omitted hitherto to oppose to the other progression which Malthus has remarked. It is a Harmony which we cannot explain in this place, but must reserve for the chapter on Population. But I must here put the reader on his guard against a specious objection. If the mission of capital, it may be said, is to cause nature to execute work which has been hitherto executed by human labour, whatever good it may confer upon mankind, it must do injury to the working-classes, especially to those classes who live by wages; for everything which throws hands out of employment, and renders them disposable, renders competition more intense; and this, undoubtedly, is the secret reason of the antipathy of the working-classes to men of capital. If this objection were well founded, we should have a discordant note in the social harmony. The illusion arises from losing sight of this, that ‹capital, in proportion as its action is extended, sets free and renders disposable a certain amount of human efforts, only by setting free and rendering disposable a corresponding fund of remuneration›, so that these two elements meet and compensate one another. The labour is not paralyzed. Replaced in a special department of industry by gratuitous forces, it sets to work upon other obstacles in the general march of progress, and with more certainty, inasmuch as it finds its recompense prepared beforehand.