It represents, not use value, but
market value. To be a thousand pounds out of pocket for a year means
an opportunity of gain irretrievably lost, gain that could have been
made otherwise than by money-lending. Where this is so, and so far as
it is so, the lender may without violation of justice point to _lucrum
cessans_, gain lost, and arrange beforehand with the borrower for
being reimbursed with interest.
13. The transition from mediaeval housekeeping, with its use values
and private exchange, to the mercantile society of modern times, was
not made in a day, nor went on everywhere at the same rate. It was a
growth of ages. In great cities commerce rapidly ripened, and was well
on towards maturity five centuries ago. Then the conditions that
render interest lawful, and mark it off from usury, readily came to
obtain. But those centres were isolated. Like the centres of
ossification, which appear here and there in cartilage when it is
being converted into bone, they were separated one from another by
large tracts remaining in the primitive condition. Here you might have
a great city, Hamburg or Genoa, an early type of commercial
enterprise, and, fifty miles inland, society was in its infancy, and
the great city was as part of another world.
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