Defence of Usury [18]
to whose cast of mind sound reason is much more congenial than ancient philosophy, you have, I dare to say, gone before me in remarking, that the practical inference from this shrewd observation, if it afforded any, should have been, that it would be to no purpose for a man to try to get five per cent out of money -- not, that if he could contrive to get so much, there would be any harm in it. But the sages of those days did not view the matter in that light. A consideration that did not happen to present itself to that great philosopher, but which had it happened to present itself, might not have been altogether unworthy of his notice, is, that though a daric would not beget another daric, any more than it would a ram, or an ewe, yet for a daric which a man borrowed, he might get a ram and a couple of ewes, and that the ewes, were the ram left with them a certain time, would probably not be barren. That then, at the end of the year, he would find himself master of his three sheep, together with two, if not three, lambs; and that, if he sold his sheep again to pay back his daric, and gave one of his lambs for the use of it in the mean time, he would be two lambs, or at least one lamb, richer than if he had made no such bargain. These theological and philosophical conceits, the offspring of the day, were not ill seconded by principles of a more permanent complexion. The business of a money-lender, though only among Christians, and in Christian times, a proscribed profession, has no where, nor at any time, been a popular one. Those who have the resolution to sacrifice the present to future, are natural objects of envy to those who have sacrificed the future to the present. The children who have eat their cake are the natural enemies of the children who have theirs. While the money is hoped for, and for a short time after it has been received, he who lends it is a friend and benefactor: by the time the money is spent, and the evil hour of reckoning is come, the benefactor is found to have changed his nature, and to have put on the tyrant and the oppressor. It is an oppression for a man to reclaim his own money: it is none to keep it from him. Among the inconsiderate, that is among the great mass of mankind, selfish affections conspire with the social in treasuring up all favour for the man of dissipation, and in refusing justice to the man of thrift who has supplied him. In some shape or other that favour attends the chosen object of it, through every stage of his career. But, in no stage of his career, can the man of thrift come in for any share of it. It is the general interest of those with whom a man lives, that his expence should be at least as great as his circumstances will bear. because there are few expences which a man can launch into, but what the benefit of it is shared, in some proportion or other, by those with whom he lives. In that circle originates a standing law, forbidding every man, on pain of infamy, to confine his expences Within what is adjudged to be the measure of his means, saving always the power of exceeding that limit, as much as he thinks proper: and the means assigned him by that law may be ever so much beyond his real means, but are sure never to fall short of them. So close is the combination thus formed between the idea of merit and the idea of expenditure, that a disposition to spend finds favour in the eyes even of those who know that a man's circumstances do not entitle him to the means: and an upstart, whose chief recommendation is this disposition, shall find himself to have purchased a permanent fund of respect, to the prejudice of the very persons at whose expence he has been gratifying his appetites and his pride. The lustre, which the display of borrowed wealth has diffused over his character; awes men, during the season of his prosperity, into a submission to his insolence: and when the hand of adversity has overtaken him at last, the recollection of the height, from which he has fallen, throw the veil of compassion over his injustice. The condition of the man of thrift