Greatly incensed at the action of the trading companies he set about writing his “Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher” (1524).
Here, speaking of the wholesale traders and merchants, he says: “The foreign trade that brings wares from Calicut, India and so forth, such as spices and costly fabrics of silk and cloth of gold, which serve only for display and are of no use, but merely suck the money out of our country and people, would not be allowed had we a government and real rulers.” The Old Testament patriarchs indeed bought and sold, he says, but “only cattle, wool, grain, butter, milk and such like; these are God’s gifts which He raises from the earth and distributes among men”; but the present trade means only the “throwing away of our gold and silver into foreign countries.”[233]
Traders were, according to him, in a bad case from the moral point of view: “Let no one come and ask how he may with a good conscience belong to one of these companies. There is no other counsel than this: ‘Drop it’; there is no other way. If the companies are to go on, then that will be the end of law and honesty; if law and honesty are to remain, then the companies must cease.” The companies, so he had already said, are through and through “unstable and without foundation, all rank avarice and injustice, so that they cannot even be touched with a good conscience.… They hold all the goods in their hands and do with them as they please.” They aim “at making sure of their profit in any case, which is contrary to the nature, not only of commercial wares but of all temporal goods which God wishes to be ever in danger and uncertainty. They, however, have discovered a means of securing a sure profit even on uncertain temporal goods.” A man can thus “in a short time become so rich as to be able to buy up kings and emperors”; such a thing cannot possibly be “right or godly.”[234]
As a further reason for condemning profit from trade and money transactions he points out, that such profit does not arise from the earth or from cattle.[235]
With both these arguments he is, however, on purely mediæval ground. He pays but little regard to the new economic situation, though he has a keen eye for the abuses and the injustice which undoubtedly accompanied the new commerce. Instead, however, of confining his censure to these and pointing out how things might be improved, he prefers to take his stand on an already obsolete theory—one, nevertheless, which many shared with him—and condemn unconditionally all such commercial undertakings with the violence and lack of consideration usual in him.[236]
In his remarks we often find interesting thoughts on the economic conditions; we see the remarkable range of his intellect and occasionally we may even wonder whence he had his vast store of information. It is also evident, however, that the other work with which he was overwhelmed did not leave him time to digest his matter. Often enough he is right when he stigmatises the excesses, but on the whole he goes much too far. As Frank G. Ward says: “Because he was incapable of passing a discriminating judgment on the abuses that existed he simply condemned all commerce off-hand.”[237] He was too fond of scenting evil usury everywhere. A contemporary of his, the merchant Bonaventura Furtenbach, of Nuremberg, having come across one of Luther’s writings on the subject, possibly his “Von Kauffshandlung,” remarked sarcastically: “Were I to try to write a commentary on the Gospel of Luke everyone would say, you are not qualified to do so. So it is with Luther when he treats of the interest on money; he has never studied such matters.”[238] A Hamburg merchant also made fun of Luther’s economics, and, as the Hamburg Superintendent Æpinus (Johann Hock) reported, quoted the instance of the Peripatetician Phormion, who gave Hannibal a scholastic lecture on the art of war, for which reason it is usual to dub him who tries to speak of things of which he knows nothing, a new Phormion.[239]
In his “An den Adel” Luther had shown himself more reticent, though even here he inveighs against interest and trading companies, and says: “I am not conversant with figures, but I cannot understand how, with a hundred florins, it is possible to gain twenty annually.… I leave this to the worldly wise. I, as a theologian, have only to censure the appearance of evil concerning which St. Paul says [1 Thess. v. 22] ‘from all appearance of evil refrain!’ This I know very well,” he continues, speaking from the traditional standpoint, “that it would be much more godly to pay more attention to tilling the soil and less to trade.” Yet, even in this writing, he goes so far as to say: “It is indeed high time that a bit were put in the mouth of the Fuggers and such-like companies.”[240]
More and more plainly he was, however, forced to realise that it was not within his power to check the new development of commerce; he, nevertheless, stuck by his earlier views. He was also, and to some extent justifiably, shocked at the growing luxury which had made its way into the burgher class and into the towns generally in the train of foreign trade. Instead of “staying in his place and being content with a moderate living,” “everyone wants to be a merchant and to grow rich.”[241]
“We despise the arts and languages,” he says, “but refuse to do without the foreign wares which are neither necessary nor profitable to us, but [the expenses of] which lay our very bones bare. Do we not thereby show ourselves to be true Germans, i.e. fools and beasts?”[242] God “has given us, like other nations, sufficient wool, hair, flax and everything else necessary for suitable and becoming clothing, but now men squander fortunes on silk, satin, cloth of gold and all sorts of foreign stuffs.… We could also do with less spices.” People might say he was trying to “put down the wholesale trade and commerce. But I do my duty. If things are not improved in the community, at least let whoever can amend.”[243]
“I cannot see that much in the way of good has ever come to a country through commerce.”[244]