Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/70

 62] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [march

mercial or general financial business, in the course of which he might lend money. The object was to provide a sufficient protection to those who were legitimate lenders of money. It further provided that a copy of every contract, with the conditions, should be given to the borrower. The bill proposed to give power to the courts to review and go behind any con- tract with a money-lender, and to relieve the borrower where the burden of the contract which the latter had undertaken was totally disproportionate to the amount of benefit he had received. It provided that, where the interest was less than 10 per cent, per annum, the court should not exercise any power of review. Where the interest exceeded 10 per cent., or where the amounts charged for inquiries, bonus, etc., were excessive, the court might reopen the transaction, and might order a statement of accounts to be made between the borrower and the lender, in order to ascertain the amount which, according to all the risks and circumstances of the case, should be regarded by the court as fair and reasonable.

The only serious opposition provoked by the bill came from the Duke of Argyll, who, through the medium of a letter to the Times (March 3), urged certain objections to one of the clauses, although approving of the measure generally. This clause empowered the courts to revise bargains involving an interest at the rate of more than 10 per cent. ; and this the duke regarded as an unwarrantable interference with freedom of contract. Lord James, in defending his bill (March 16), said that without the clause he feared that not only would the bill be worth very little, but it might even add to the power of the money-lender by enabling him to say that his proceedings had parliamentary sanction. The duke was consistent in opposing the clause, for he had opposed the Irish Land Act of 1881, which provided that contracts between landlord and tenant should in some cases be revised. With respect to another criticism on the bill, Lord James said it was true that pawnbrokers could charge as much as 25 per cent., but they were not pawnbrokers in the eye of the law when lending sums of over 101. Further, the bill would endeavour to place pawnbrokers and other money- lenders on a more general level in this respect. The second reading was then agreed to without a division.

Experiments in State socialism were even more numerous in the House of Commons, and both the Government and private members showed a desire to dabble in them. In the majority of cases no reasonable hope of legislative results could have existed in the mind of their authors, whilst the feeling of the majority towards the Government measures was generally so lukewarm that their abandonment at any stage would have occasioned no surprise, and probably as little regret. Before Easter no fewer than five bills were brought in dealing with the subject of Old Age Pensions, besides an Outdoor Provident Belief Bill. Of these only one, and that especially fathered