Hence the same
transaction, as described by the letter of the law, might mean lawful
interest in the city, and usury out in the country--the two were so
disconnected. In such a situation the legislator has to choose between
forbidding interest here and allowing usury there; between restraining
speculation and licensing oppression. The mediaeval legislator chose
the former alternative. Church and State together enacted a number of
laws to restrain the taking of interest, laws that, like the clothes
of infancy, are not to be scorned as absurd restrictions, merely
because they are inapplicable now, and would not fit the modern growth
of nations. At this day the State has repealed those laws, and the
Church has officially signified that she no longer insists on them.
Still she maintains dogmatically that there is such a sin as usury,
and what it is, as defined in the Fifth Council of Lateran.
_Readings_.--St. Thos., 2a 2a, q. 77, art. 1; Ar., _Pol_., I., ix.;
St. Thos., 2a 2a, q. 77, art. 4; _The Month_ for September, 1886; _The
Nineteenth Century _for September, 1877, pp. 181, seq.
CHAPTER VI.
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