“Misserrimam ergo necesse est, non tantum brevissimam, vitam eorum esse, qui magno parant labore, quod majore possideant: operose assequuntur quæ volunt, anxii tenent quæ assecuti sunt. Nulla interim nunquam amplius redituri temporis est ratio”—It is clear, therefore, that the life must be very miserable, and very brief, of those, who get their gains with great labor, and hold on to their gettings with greater—who obtain the object of their wishes, with much difficulty, and are everlastingly anxious for the safe keeping of their treasures. They seem to have no true estimate of those hours, thus wasted, which never can return.
In one of his admirable letters to Lucilius, the eightieth, on the subject of poverty, he says—“Si vis scire quam nihil in illa mali sit, compara inter se pauperum et divitum vultus. Sæpius pauper et fidelius ridet; nulla sollicitudo in alto est; etiamsi qua incidit cura, velut nubes levis transit Horum, qui felices vocantur, hilaritas ficta est, au gravis et suppurata tristitia; eo quidem gravior, quia interdum non licet palam esse miseros, sed inter ærumnas, cor ipsum exedentes, necesse est agere felicem”—If you wish to know, that there is no evil therein, compare the faces of the rich and the poor. The poor man laughs much oftener, and more heartily. There is no wearying solicitude pressing upon his inmost soul, and when care comes, it passes away, like a thin cloud. But the hilarity of these rich men, who are called happy, is affected, or a deep-seated and rankling anxiety, the more oppressive, because it never would answer for them to appear as miserable, as they are, being constrained to appear happy, in the midst of harassing cares, gnawing at their vitals.
If Seneca had been on ’Change, daily, during the last half year, and watched the countenances of our wealthy money-lenders, he could not have portrayed the picture with a more masterly pencil. The rate of usury has, of course, a relation to the hazard encountered, and that hazard is ever uppermost in the mind of the usurer: and it is extremely doubtful, if the hope, however sanguine, of realizing two per cent. a month, is always sufficient, to quiet those fears, which will occasionally arise, of losing the principal and interest together.
I never buried an old usurer, without a conviction, as I looked upon his hard, corrugated features, that, if he could carry nothing else with him, he certainly carried upon his checkered brow the very phylactery of his calling. We may talk about money, as an article of commerce, till we are tired—we may weary the legislature, by our importunity, into a repeal of the existing laws against usury—we may cudgel our brains, to stretch the mantle of the law over our operations, and make it appear a regular business transaction—it is a case, in which no refinement of the culinary art will ever be able to disguise, or neutralize, the odor of the opossum—there ever was—there is—there ever will be, I am afraid, a certain touch of moral nastiness about it, which no casuistical chemistry will ever be able entirely to remove.
Doubtless, there are men, who take something more, during a period of scarcity, than legal interest, and who are very worthy men withal. There are others, who are descendants, in the right line, from the horse-leech of biblical history—who take all they can get. Now, there is but one category: they are all usurers; and those, who are respectable, impart of their respectability to such, as have little or none; and give a confidence to those, who would be treated with contempt, for their merciless gripings, were they not banded together, with men of character, in the same occupation, as usurers. Those, who take seven or eight per cent. per annum, and those who take one per cent. a day, and such things have been, are not easily distinguished; but the question, who come within the category, as usurers, is a thing more readily comprehended. All are such, who exceed the law.
Usurer, originally, was not a term of reproach; for interest and usury meant one and the same thing. The earlier statutes against usury, in England, were directed chiefly against the Jews—whose lineal descendants are still in our midst. Usury was forbidden, by act of Parliament, in 1341. The rate then taken by the Jews, was enormous. In 1545, 37 Henry VIII., the rate established was ten per cent. This statute was confirmed by 13 Eliz. 1570. Reduced to eight per cent., 21 James I. 1623, when the word interest was first employed, instead of usury. Again reduced, by Cromwell, 1650, to six per cent. Confirmed by Charles II. 1660. Reduced to five per cent., 5 Anne, 1714.
There are not two words about it; extortion and usury harden the heart; soil the reputation; and diminish the quantum of happiness, by lowering the standard of self-respect. That unconscionable griper, whose god is Mammon, and who fattens upon misery, as surely as the vulture upon carrion, stalking up and down like a commercial buzzard, tearing away the substance of his miserable victim, by piecemeal—two per cent. a month—can he be happy! However much like a human being he may have looked, in his youth, the workings of his mercenary soul have told too truly upon his iron features, until that visage would form an appropriate figure-head for the portal of ’Change alley, or the Inquisition.
————“Is your name Shylock?
Shylock is my name.”
To how many, in this age of anxious inquirers, may we hold up this picture, and propound this interrogatory!
God is just, though Mahomet be not his prophet. Instead of exclaiming, that God’s ways are past finding out, let us go doggedly to work, and study them a little. Some of them, I humbly confess, appear sufficiently intelligible, with common sense for an expositor. Does not the All-wise contriver say, in language not to be mistaken, to such as worship, at the shrines of avarice and sensuality—you have chosen idols, and your punishment shall consist, in part, in the ridicule and contempt, which the worship of these idols brings upon your old age. You—the victim of intemperance—shall continue, with your bloated lips, to worship—not a stone image—but a stone jug; and grasping your idol with your trembling fingers, literally stagger into the grave! And you, though last, not least, of all vermicular things, whose whole time and intellectual powers are devoted to no higher object than making money—shall still crawl along, heaping up treasure, day after day—day after day—to die at last, not knowing who shall come after you, a wise man or a fool!