Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/239

 accept something from the borrower without formally binding the latter—was a mortal sin. It was only by a refined and ingenious adaptation of this traditional doctrine to the needs and facts of economic life, as time went on, that any progress at all was possible. But the general result was that business passed largely into the hands of the Jews at high rates of interest, and that the Church itself had to connive at pious evasions of its own principles by means of monts de piété and similar devices; and that after the Reformation trade and commerce found a more natural home in the countries which had shaken themselves free from the meshes of the Canon Law, than in those which still held by the ancient faiths.

Exchange, or local usury, Sir William points out, arises simply when one man furnishes another with money at some distant place, and engages under peculiar penalties to pay him there and at a certain day, or at some convenient time. 'The questions arising,' he proceeds, 'are what are the natural standards of usury and exchange? As for usury the least that can be, is the rent of so much land as the money lent will buy, when the security is undoubted; but when the security is casual, then a kind of insurance must be interwoven with the simple natural interest, which may advance the usury very conscionably, unto any height below the principal itself. Now if things are so in England, that really there is no such security, but that all are more or less hazardous, troublesome or chargeable to make, I see no reason for endeavouring to limit usury upon time any more than that upon place.' But he seems to have conceived the possibility of a state of such absolute security that no ' damnum emergens ' could exist, and any interest on a loan would consequently be unfair beyond the standard of interest on money fixed by the rent of land. The laws against usury, he maliciously suggests, probably arose because those who made such laws 'were rather borrowers than lenders'—a suggestion which soon