The passage which I have italicized, from Mr. Lecky, is a very precious statement of his sagacious creed. The chief jest of it is his having imagined himself to be of Aristotle’s ‘species’!
“To get profit without responsibility has been a fond scheme as impossible of honest attainment as the philosopher’s stone or perpetual motion. Visionaries have imagined such things to exist, but it has been reserved for this mammon-worshipping generation to find it in that arrangement by which a man, without labour, can secure a permanent income with perfect security, and without diminution of the capital.
“A view of it is evidently taken by Lord Bacon when he says that usury bringeth the treasure of a realm into few hands; for the usurer trading on a certainty, and other men on uncertainties, at the end of the game all the money will be in the box.
“We have had now an opportunity of practically testing this [[156]]theory; not more than seventeen years have elapsed since all restraint was removed from the growth of what Lord Coke calls this ‘pestilent weed’ and we see Bacon’s words verified, the rich becoming richer, and the poor poorer, is the cry throughout the whole civilized world. Rollin in his Ancient History, speaking of the Roman Empire, tells us that it has been the ruin of every state where it was tolerated. It is in a fair way to ruin this of ours, and ruin it it will, unless England’s sons calmly and candidly investigate the question for themselves, and resolutely act upon the conclusions to which the investigation must lead them.
“There is such a thing as unlimited liability; of the justice of such laws I do not now speak, but the law exists, and as it was made by moneyed men in the interest of moneyed men they cannot refuse to be judged by it. The admission, therefore, of the fact that interest is a share of the profit, would throw upon the money-lender the burden of unlimited liability; this he certainly refuses to admit, consequently he has no alternative but to confess that interest has nothing whatever to do with profit, but that it is a certain inherent property of money, viz., that of producing money, and that interest is as legitimately the offspring of money as a Calf is that of a Cow. That this is really the stand now taken, may be shown from the literature and practice of the present day. Mr. Lecky, one of the latest champions of interest, boldly admits it. In his history of the rise and influence of rationalism in Europe, p. 284, after quoting Aristotle’s saying, that all money is sterile by nature, he says, ‘This is an absurdity of Aristotle’s, and the number of centuries during which it was incessantly asserted without being (so far as we know) once questioned, is a curious illustration of the longevity of a sophism when expressed in a terse form, and sheltered by a great name. It is enough to make one ashamed of his species to think that Bentham was the first to bring into notice the simple consideration that if the borrower employs the borrowed money in buying bulls and cows, and if these produce calves to ten times the [[157]]value of the interest, the money borrowed can scarcely be said to be sterile.’
“And now to remedy all this. Were there no remedy, to parade it in our view, would be cruel; but there is one, so simple, that like those of divine making, it may be despised for its simplicity. It consists in the recognition of the supreme wisdom which forbade the taking of usury. We should not reimpose the usury laws, which were in themselves a blunder and a snare, nor would we advocate the forcible repression of the vice any more than we do that of other vices, such as gambling or prostitution, but we would put them on precisely the same footing, and enact thus—
Whereas, usury is a sin detestable and abominable, the law will refuse to recognize any contract in which it is an element.
The first effect of this would be, that all those who had lent, taking security into their hands, would have no power of oppression beyond keeping the pledge,—the balance of their debts being on a similar footing to those of the men who had lent without security.
“To these their chance of repayment would depend on their previous conduct. If they had lent their money to honourable men, they would surely be repaid; if to rogues, they surely would not; and serve them right. Those, and those only, who have lent without interest would have the power of an action at law to recover; and as such men must have possessed philanthropy, they could safely be trusted with that power.
“Regarding the future employment of money, a usurer who intended to continue his unholy trade, would lend only to such men as would repay without legal pressure, and from such men trade would not have to fear competition. But to disreputable characters the money-market would be hermetically sealed; and then as commerce, freed from the competition of these scoundrels, began again to be remunerative, we should find it more to our [[158]]advantage to take an interest in commerce than usury from it, and so gradually would equity supersede iniquity, and peace and prosperity be found where now abound corruption, riot, and rebellion, with all the host of evils inseparable from a condition of plethoric wealth on one hand, and on the other hopeless and despairing poverty.”