5. As there is a twofold value, and a twofold exchange, so a twofold
character is impressed on the great instrument of exchange, money.
Money, in one character, is an instrument of private exchange: in its
other character, to mercantile men more familiar, it is an instrument
of commercial exchange. In the one, it represents use value to the
particular owner, more or less to him than it would be to some other
owner: in the other, it represents market value, the same to all at
the same time.
6. Leo X. in the Fifth Council of Lateran, 1515, ruled that--"usury is
properly interpreted to be the attempt to draw profit and increment,
without labour, without cost, and without risk, out of the use of a
thing that does not fructify." In 1745 Benedict XIV. wrote in the same
sense to the Bishops of Italy: "That kind of sin which is called
usury, and which has its proper seat and place in the contract of
_mutuum_, consists in turning that contract, which of its own nature
requires the amount returned exactly to balance the amount received,
into a ground for demanding a return in excess of the amount
received.
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