Private interest

“ Note, There is a woe to those who are in public trusts, but consult only their own private interest, and are more inquisitive about the benefice than about the office, what money is to be got than what good to be done. ”

“ True private property, is a political being permanently guided by good moral principles, because its interest is to do right; spurious, one as permanently guided by evil, because its interest is to do wrong. ”

“ From whence it follows, that where the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced. ”

“ James Anderson, in his Political Economy, published in 1801, says, "Private interest is the great source of public good, which, though operating unseen, never ceases one moment to act with unabating power, if it be not perverted by the futile regulations of some short-sighted politician." ”

“ Where the problem is relatively simple, as it is apt to be when private interests only are involved, it generally proves adequate. But with the increasing complexity of society, the public interest tends to become omnipresent ”

“ The private interest of many powerful individuals, the confirmed prejudices of great bodies of people seem, indeed, at present, to oppose to so great a change such obstacles as it may be very difficult, perhaps altogether impossible, to surmount. ”

“ We count, in the future as in the past, on the driving power of individual initiative and the incentive of fair private profit, strengthened with the acceptance of those obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all. ”

“ Is it ever scrupled, in extraordinary Cases, to violate all Regard to the private Property of Individuals, and sacrifice to public Interest a Distinction, which had been establish'd for the Sake of that Interest? ”

“ It was a grand Tryal which pressd hard upon their private Interest. But the Landholders find it for their Interest to manufacture and it is their happy Consideration that while they are most effectually serving their Country they are adding to their private fortunes. ”

“ Private ownership is constantly opposed to public interest, and the narrow point of view of immediate individual profit as the determining factor in all transactions obscures larger issues and stultifies collective action for the public good. ”

“ His business being a useful one, it is the interest of the public that the ordinary motives should exist for carrying it on, and that neither law nor opinion should prevent an operation beneficial to the public from being attended with as much private advantage as is compatible with full and free competition. ”

“ If ignored in the domain of private morals, they "spring up and expand once more into questions of public equity; neglected as matters of public equity, they blossom into questions of national interest ”

“ Contrariwise, one sees a pursuit of private interests no less keen than among traders. Hence, unless we suppose that men’s natures will be suddenly exalted, we must conclude that the pursuit of private interests will sway the doings of all the component classes in a socialistic society. ”

“ Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others. ”

“ It cannot plead its inherently private character or its subordination to the market as cover for the pursuit of different goals of particular interest to itself. The public agency has an unquestioned tendency to pursue goals that reflect its own interest and convenience and to adapt social objective thereto. ”

“ In considering the harm done to civic duty by selfish personal interests we were led to observe that the fewer points of contact between government and the pecuniary interests of private citizens, the better both for the purity of government and for the conscience of the private citizen. ”

“ Though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society; ”

“ The state expresses the cooperative or mutual-veto will of that part of society which is politically organized for this purpose. Private property expresses the individual will of the several private owners, or of the private chief, whether patriarch, pope, suzerain, boss, or industrial monopolist, who is at the head of the particular institution. The sociological view, being strictly inductive, does not impart to the theory of the state that which is potential and ideal, but only that which is actual and historical. ”

“ But if these common advantages, these public means of society, offering so many important agents to the individual for the gratification of his wants, alone are worth more to him than all the precarious power of the savage state—how incomparably greater are his advantages when we consider the wonderful accumulations, in the form of private wealth, which are ready to be exchanged with the labour of all those who are in a condition to add to the store. ”

“ Our own choice is shewn by our continual aspiration to possess property, our common hailing of it as sacred, our setting apart of the word Respectable for those who have attained it, our ascription of pre-eminent religiousness to commandments forbidding its violation, and our identification of law and order among men with its protection. Therefore is it vital to a living knowledge of our society that Private Property should be known in every step of its progress from its source in cupidity to its end in confusion. ”

“ When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he in effect grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good to the extent of the interest he has thus created. ”

“ If a man cannot make his assets available at pleasure, his assets of capacity and character and resource, what satisfaction is it to him to see opportunity beckoning to him on every hand, when others have the keys of credit in their pockets and treat them as all but their own private possession? ”

“ I feel that we are coming to a view through the drift of our legislation and our public thinking in the past quarter century that private economic power is, to enlarge an old phrase, a public trust as well. ”

“ In the third state, toward which society is trending, the concept of service will rule, and private property as a dominant concept will be compelled to take a thoroughly subordinate place in human activities. ”

“ For instance, that those who carry out the reforms in question will be sure to get well paid for their pains; seeing that the transaction necessarily passes so much money and goods through their fingers, as well to private, as public profit. ”

“ And we shall not imagine that the science of political economy, which deals, among other {6} things with the production and exchange of wealth which is private property, makes any pronouncement whatever on the question whether private property is or is not an institution which we ought to support and believe in. ”

“ And the Volitionalists believe that everybody reincarnates as he pleases, and so they favor continuance of the present system of private ownership of wealth and private profit under a system of free competition. ”

“ All those things which belong to the class of private utilities should be left to private ownership, because I believe in individualism; but all those things which partake of the nature of public utilities should belong to the public. ”

“ But, if he wishes to set aside for his private uses any portion of the general wealth, whether the piece of property contains his own labor or that of some one else, then he must pay on that piece of property the rest of the people's share of value bound up in it; and, if every other member of society pays his appropriate share of such values, exact justice is reached in every respect. ”

“ Functionless property appears natural to those who believe that society should be organized for the acquisition of private wealth, and attacks upon it perverse or malicious, because the question which they ask of any institution is, "What does it yield?" ”

“ The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. ”

“ Will the audience make a separate interest, which bestows on it exclusive wealth and power, subservient to the general interest, which rigidly refuses to feed it with either.
If it is a moral truth, that mankind prefer themselves to others, then it is a moral certainty, that members, both of the government and of the corporation, will prefer the interest of the corporation to the interest of the nation. ”

“ In the further development of the organization of labor and of large business, the public interest, as well [Pg 115] as the interest of Labor and Capital alike, will, it seems to me, be best advanced by whatever stimulates every man to do the best work of which he is capable; by a fuller recognition of the common interest of employers and employed; and by an earnest effort to dispel distrust and hatred and to promote good-will. ”

“ It should seem, then, to be the particular Interest even of the most Wealthy, if they be the real Friends of Liberty,—'tis certainly the general Interest of a free Community; that some legal Limitation of Property should take Place. ”

“ We have chartered the self-interest of the individual as the rightful sovereign of conduct; we have taught that the scramble for profit is the best method of administering the riches of earth and the exchange of services. ”

“ You used to vote perhaps once a year, taking five minutes for it, and grudging the time at that as lost from your private business, the pursuit of which you called, I believe, 'the main chance.' Our private business is the public business, and we have no other of importance. ”

“ It is the state which hinders men from entering into a direct relation with others. On the mercy of right my private property depends. Only within prescribed limits am I allowed to compete. Only the medium of exchange, the money which the state makes, am I allowed to use. The forms of the state may change, the purpose of the state always remains the same. ”

“ He finds law controlling economic power and imposing social responsibilities upon individual ownership. He finds the common will and the common well-being putting a bridle on the neck of the individual will and the individual interest. ”

“ Applying the standards of society as a whole, we perceive that the completely independent and sovereign individual existence of private enterprises is only the historically conditioned form, whereas it is social interconnections that provide the foundation. ”

“ But there seems to be some confusion of ideas in connection with this phrase, "publicity of private affairs," for really, so far as taxation is concerned, there ought to be nothing "private" about the amount of any man's income, or the aggregate of all forms of his property, inasmuch as every man has a right to know, that all his neighbors are contributing pro rata with himself to support that Government, which is common to him and them. ”

“ Reasons for interest.—The propriety of interest under any circumstances has often been questioned, and its rightfulness is still bitterly disputed. Both church and state have at times denounced the receiving of interest as criminal. Yet in actual practice of commercial life throughout the world interest has been sustained in all ages. ”

“ Hence as a private man has a right to say, what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their Substance, for the Administration of publick affairs. ”

“ And this species of individual wealth, constitutes the whole mass of power and talents, by which the poor and uninformed are secured in their rights and liberties, under the bond which unites all persons having the same interest. ”

“ The difference between private and public ownership, it seems to me, is mainly in the natural selection of those most competent to foresee the future and to direct labor into the most productive channels, and the greater poignancy of the illusion of self-seeking under which the private owner works. ”

“ Let us now take a glance at a snug little commercial bubble, blown into being by 'highly respectable men,' a private affair altogether, which never had a name upon 'Change, and was managed—we cannot say to the satisfaction of all parties—by the originating contrivers, without making any noise in the papers, or exciting public attention in any way. ”

“ Hence it is possible to define several economies or stages of organization which are successively more complete. The simple interest, first, is the isolated interest, pursued regardlessly of other interests; in other words, not as yet brought under the form of morality. ”