Defence of Usury [3]
paternal, or, if you please, maternal, care, may be a good work, but it certainly is but a work of supererogation. For my own part, I must confess, that so long as such methods only are employed, as to me appear proper ones, and such there are, I should not feel myself disinclined to see some measures taken for the restraining of prodigality: but this I can not look upon as being of the number. My reasons I will now endeavour to lay before you. In the first place, I take it, that it is neither natural nor usual for prodigals, as such, to betake themselves to this method, I mean, that of giving a rate of interest above the ordinary one, to supply their wants. In the first place, no man, I hope you will allow. prodigal or not prodigal, ever thinks of borrowing money to spend, so long as he has ready money of his own, or effects which he can turn into ready money without loss. And this deduction strikes off what, I suppose, you will look upon as the greatest proportion of the persons subject, at any given time, to the imputation of prodigality. In the next place, no man, in such a country as Great Britain at least, has occasion, nor is at all likely, to take up money at an extraordinary rate of interest, who has security to give, equal to that upon which money is commonly to be had at the highest ordinary rate. While so many advertise, as are to be seen every day advertising, money to be lent at five per cent what should possess a man, who has any thing to offer that can be called a security, to give, for example, six per cent is more than I can conceive. You may say, perhaps, that a man who wishes to lend his money out upon security, wishes to have his interest punctually, and that without the expence, and hazard, and trouble, and odium of going to law; and that, on this account, it is better to have a sober man to deal with than a prodigal. So far I allow you; but were you to add, that on this account it would be necessary for a prodigal to offer more than another man, there I should disagree with you. In the first place, it is not so easy a thing, nor, I take it, a common thing, for the lender upon security to be able to judge, or even to form any attempt to judge, whether the conduct of one who offers to borrow his money is or is not of such a cast, as to bring him under this description. The question, prodigal or not prodigal, depends upon two pieces of information; neither of which, in general, is very easy to come at: on the one hand, the amount of his means and reasonable expectations; on the other band, the amount of his expenditure. The goodness or badness of the security is a question of a very different nature: upon this head, every man has a known and ready means of obtaining that sort of information, which is the most satisfactory the nature of things affords, by going to his lawyer. It is accordingly, I take it, on their lawyers opinion, that lenders in general found their determination in these cases, and not upon any calculations they may have formed, concerning the receipt and expenditure of the borrower. But even supposing a man's disposition to prodigality to be ever so well known, there are always enough to be found, to whom such a disposition would be rather an inducement than an objection, so long as they were satisfied with the security. Every body knows the advantage to be made in case of mortgage, by foreclosing or forcing a sale: and that this advantage it not uncommonly looked out for, will, I believe, hardly be doubted by any one, who has had any occasion to observe the course of business in the court of Chancery. In short, so long as a prodigal has any thing to pledge, or to dispose of, whether in possession, or even in reversion, whether of a certain or even of a contingent nature, I see not, how he can receive the smallest benefit, from any laws that are, or can be made to fix the rate of interest. For, suppose the law to be efficacious as far as it goes, and that the prodigal can find none of those monsters called usurers to deal with him, does he lie quiet? No such thing: