155. The foregoing letter, to which I would fain have given my undivided and unwearied attention, reached my hands, as will be seen by its date, only in the close of the year, when my general correspondence always far overpasses my powers of dealing with it, and my strength—such as now is left me—had been spent, nearly to lowest ebb, in totally unexpected business arising out of the threatened mischief at Venice. But I am content that such fragmentary reply as, under this pressure, has been possible to me, should close the debate as far as I am myself concerned. The question at issue is not one of private interpretation; and the interests concerned are too vast to allow its decision to be long delayed.
The Bishop will, I trust, not attribute to disrespect the mode of reply in the form of notes attached to special passages, indicated by inserted letters, which was adopted in Fors Clavigera in all cases of important correspondence, as more clearly defining the several points under debate.
156. (A) "The challenge appears to have been delivered." May I respectfully express my regret that your lordship should not have read the letter you have honored me by answering. The number of Fors referred to does not deliver—it only reiterates—the challenge given in the Fors for January 1st, 1875, with reference to the prayer "Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites," in these following terms: "Who are the true Israelites, my Lord of Manchester, on your Exchange? Do they stretch their cloth, like other people?—have they any underhand dealings with the liable-to-be-damned false Israelites—Rothschilds and the like? or are they duly solicitous about those wanderers' souls? and how often, on the average, do your Manchester clergy preach from the delicious parable, savoriest of all Scripture to rogues (at least since the eleventh century, when I find it to have been specially headed with golden title in my best Greek MS.) of the Pharisee and Publican,—and how often, on the average, from those objectionable First and Fifteenth Psalms?"
(B) "I have no idea why I had the honor of being specially mentioned by name." By diocese, my Lord; not name, please observe; and for this very simple reason: that I have already fairly accurate knowledge of the divinity of the old schools of Canterbury, York, and Oxford; but I looked to your Lordship as the authoritative exponent of the more advanced divinity of the school of Manchester, with which I am not yet familiar.
157. (C) "What do you mean by usury?" What I mean by that word, my Lord, is surely of no consequence to anyone but my few readers, and fewer disciples. What David and his Son meant by it I have prayed your Lordship to tell your flock, in the name of the Church which dictates daily to them the songs of the one, and professes to interpret to them the commands of the other.
And although I can easily conceive that a Bishop at the court of the Third Richard might have paused in reply to a too curious layman's question of what was meant by "Murder"; and can also conceive a Bishop at the court of the Second Charles hesitating as to the significance of the word "Adultery"; and farther, in the present climacteric of the British Constitution, an elder of the Church of Glasgow debating within himself whether the Commandment which was severely prohibitory of Theft might not be mildly permissive of Misappropriation;—at no time, nor under any conditions, can I conceive any question existing as to the meaning of the words τοκος, fœnus; usura, or usury: and I trust that your Lordship will at once acquit me of wishing to attach any other significance to the word than that which it was to the full intended to convey on every occasion of its use by Moses, by David, by Christ, and by the Doctors of the Christian Church, down to the seventeenth century.
Nor, even since that date, although the commercial phrase "interest" has been adopted in order to distinguish an open and unoppressive rate of usury from a surreptitious and tyrannical one, has the debate of lawfulness or unlawfulness ever turned seriously on that distinction. It is neither justified by its defenders only in its mildness, nor condemned by its accusers only in its severity. Usury in any degree is asserted by the Doctors of the early Church to be sinful, just as theft and adultery are asserted to be sinful, though neither may have been accompanied with violence; and although the theft may have been on the most splendid scale, and the fornication of the most courtly refinement.
So also, in modern days, though the voice of the Bank of England in Parliament declares a loan without interest to be a monster,[128] and a loan made below the current rate of interest, a monster in its degree, the increase of dividends above that current rate is not, as far as I am aware, shunned by shareholders with an equally religious horror.
158. But—this strange question being asked—I give its simple and broad answer in the words of Christ: "The taking up that thou layedst not down;"—or, in explained and literal terms, usury is any money paid, or other advantage given, for the loan of anything which is restored to its possessor uninjured and undiminished. For simplest instance, taking a cabman the other day on a long drive, I lent him a shilling to get his dinner. If I had kept thirteen pence out of his fare, the odd penny would have been usury.
Or again. I lent one of my servants, a few years ago, eleven hundred pounds, to build a house with, and stock its ground. After some years he paid me the eleven hundred pounds back. If I had taken eleven hundred pounds and a penny, the extra penny would have been usury.