Defence of Usury [24]
rate" (you say) "it is to be observed, though it ought to be somewhat above, ought not to be much above, the lowest market rate. If the legal rate of interest in Great Britain, for example, was fixed so high as eight or ten per cent. the greater part of the money which was to be lent, would be lent to prodigals and projectors, who alone would be willing to give this high interest. Sober people, who will give for the use of money no more than a part of what they are likely to make by the use of it, would not venture into the competition. A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it. Where the legal interest, on the contrary, is fixed but a very little above the lowest market rate, sober people are universally preferred as borrowers, to prodigals and projectors. The person who lends money, gets nearly as much interest from the former, as he dares to take from the latter, and his money is much safer in the hands of the one set of people than in those of the other. A great part of the capital of the country is thus thrown into the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage." It happens fortunately for the side you appear to have taken, and as unfortunately for mine, that the appellative, which the custom of the language has authorized you, and which the poverty and perversity of the language has in a manner forced you, to make use of, is one, which, along with the idea of the sort of persons in question, conveys the idea of reprobation, as indiscriminately and deservedly applied to them. With what justice or consistency, or by the influence of what causes, this stamp of indiscriminate reprobation has been thus affixed, it is not immediately necessary to enquire. But, that it does stand thus affixed, you and every body else, I imagine, will be ready enough to allow. This being the case, the question stands already decided, in the first instance at least, if not irrevocably, in the judgments of all those, who, unable or unwilling to be at the pains of analysing their ideas, suffer their minds to be led captive by the tyranny of sounds; that is, I doubt, of by far the greater proportion of those whom we are likely to have to judge us. In the conceptions of all such persons, to ask whether it be fit to restrain projects and projectors, will be as much as to ask, whether it be fit to restrain rashness, and folly, and absurdity, and knavery, and waste. Of prodigals I shall say no more at present. I have already stated my reasons for thinking, that it is not among them that we are to look for the natural customers for money at high rates of interest. As far as those reasons are conclusive, it will follow, that, of the two sorts of men you mention as proper objects of the burthen of these restraints, prodigals and projectors, that burthen falls exclusively on the latter. As to these, what your definition is of projectors, and what descriptions of persons you meant to include under the censure conveyed by that name, might be material for the purpose of judging of the propriety of that censure, but makes no difference in judging of the propriety of the law, which that censure is employed to justify. Whether you yourself, were the several classes of persons made to pass before you in review, would be disposed to pick out this or that class, or this and that individual, in order to exempt them from such censure, is what for that purpose we have no need to enquire. The law, it is certain, makes no such distinctions: it falls with equal weight, and with all its weight, upon all those persons, without distinction to whom the term Projectors, in the most unpartial and extensive signification of which it is capable, can be applied. It falls at any rate (to repeat some of the words of my former definition), upon all such persons, as, in the pursuit of wealth, or even of any other object, endeavour, by the assistance of wealth, to strike into any