they were in a condition to give their own goods as equivalents; and then, as it usually happens in the exchanges of civilized society, they would have ensured a higher reward for their labour. The credit rendered the labour of the Indians loss severe, inasmuch as it allowed them to work with the aid of the accumulations of others, instead of with their own accumulations. But it doubtless gave the traders advantage, and justly so, in the terms of the exchange. If the Indians had brought their furs to the mart where the dealers had brought their blankets, there would have been exchange of capital for capital. As the Indians had not accumulated any furs, and were only hoping to accumulate, there was, on the part of the white traders, an advance of a present good for a remote equivalent. The traders had doubtless suffered by the casualties which prevented the Indians completing their engagements. They made a sudden, and therefore an unjust, change in their system. The forbearance of the Indians shows their respect for the rights of property, and their consequent appreciation of their own interests. They might, possessing the physical superiority, have seized the blankets and ammunition of the traders. If so, their exchanges would have been at an end; the capital would have gone to stimulate other industry; the Indians would have ripped up the goose with the golden eggs. It is easy to see that the employment of capital, through the agency of credit, in all the minute channels of advanced commerce, must wholly depend upon the faith which one man has in the stability and the honesty of another; and also upon the certainty of the protection of the laws which establish security of property, to enforce the fulfilment of the contract. It is necessary to establish this point of the security of property, as one of the rights, and we may add as the greatest right, of industry;--and therefore, at the risk of being thought tedious, we may call attention to the general state of the argument in reply to some who hold that the rights of property, and the rights of labour, are antagonistic. The value of an article produced is the labour required for its production. Capital, the accumulation of past labour, represents the entire amount of that labour which is not consumed;--it is the old labour stored up for exchange with new labour. Those who attach an exclusive value to new labour as distinguished from old labour--or labour as distinguished from capital--say that the new production shall be stimulated by the old production, without allowing the old production to be exchanged against the new;--that is, that the old production shall be an instrument for the reward of new labour, but not a profitable one to its possessor.