contracts, been cut down by the state, often as much as twenty-seven per cent. The Greeks were great traders by sea and land and no trade can be carried on without assured public credit. Unless investments are fairly safe, no mercantile society can thrive. The ordinary rate of interest in Greece, twelve per cent. per annum, appears at first hearing to be evidence of insecurity. It is nothing of the kind. It was not higher than the average interest[42] at Rome when that dominant people held the trade of the world, and made themselves as safe as could be. The difference between that and our three per cent. arises from the general scarcity at the time of great fortunes in money, owing to the difficulty of transit and the imperfect knowledge of a token currency. Banks and bills of exchange they commonly used, but to lend money to citizens of a neighbouring state, living under different laws and with strange courts of law, was never easy, and so the areas of lending and borrowing were not as they are now, a whole continent or even the whole globe. You might imagine such a state of things here in your country if each State was confined to seek investments within its own limits, in which case you might soon find a rate of interest for imported capital not lower than that among the Greeks. There was another strong checking power which must always have moderated the revolutionary transports of the Greeks. It was the existence in all the greater cities of a large population of slaves. We know from the history both of Argos and of Sparta that this was a standing danger to the free population, and we may be sure that in many cases free men composed their differences, or at least moderated their victory over their opponents, rather than risk having both subdued by a foreign element.