Defence of Usury [40]
that save money: but some descriptions are likely to include more such frugal individuals than others. If the tendency of the measure in question be to throw or to keep money in the hands of persons of particular descriptions in preference to others, and those descriptions are more likely to be of a frugal cast upon the whole than the descriptions of people at whose expence it is thus disposed of, the measure possesses in so far a tendency to produce the intended effect. But no such particular tendency is discoverable in it. The persons on whom it operates, belong to one or other of two classes, borrowers and lenders: its property is to favour the former at the expence of the latter. If of borrowers in general it could be said that they were more frugal than lenders, a favour shewn to borrowers as such would be a help given to frugality. But no such proposition thus taken in the lump can be received as true. Neither reason nor so much as prejudice plead in favour of it. Ask prejudice, the answer will be that, in comparison of borrowers, lenders are not only frugal, but frugal to such a degree as to be. avaricious. The supposition of their proneness to avarice is the very thing that excites prejudice against them, and disposes the bulk of mankind to favour all regulations, the tendency of which is to lay them under a disadvantage. It is because they are hoarders that they are to be discouraged -- to what end? -- in order to encourage hoarding. Such is the consistency of blind and vulgar prejudice, hitherto in so many important points the arbiter of the destiny of nations. Setting prejudice aside, and taking reason for our guide, it is impossible to say whether the cause of frugality be prejudiced or served by the favour thus shewn to borrowers, untill it be specified for what purpose a man means to borrow. When a man borrows, it is either to spend or to accumulate. So far as it favours the dissipating class of borrowers, the measure directly counteracts this its proposed object: it adds, as far as it operates, to the amount of what they are enabled to employ in dissipation. It is not incumbent on those who take the side I take, to go about to prove a negative, viz. that in the class of borrowers there is not likely to be more frugality than in the class of lenders. It is incumbent on those who take the side I combat, to establish the opposite affirmative proposition. Every restraint on liberty is so far an evil: and it lies on him who proposes any such restraint, to shew the greater good by which this evil is counterbalanced. This has never been attempted: nor, howsoever it may have been tacitly taken for granted, has it in any instance been directly and explicitly affirmed. Propositions diametrically opposite are both received with open arms, to justify the propensity to injure and oppress the class of lenders. At one time lenders are to be pinched, because borrowers are more likely to be spendthrifts than hoarders: at another time, because they are more likely to be hoarders than spendthrifts. Persons concerned in bargains of this kind may be distinguished into three classes: possessors of capital who risk to lend it, i.e. money lenders; dissipating borrowers; and accumulating borrowers. The restraint in question favours the two latter classes at the expence of the former. That in as far as it favours dissipating borrowers, it counteracts its avowed purpose, is manifest at any rate: does it promote that purpose in as far as it favours accumulating borrowers? This can not so clearly be averred. It does so only in as far as the accumulating borrowers are greater accumulators than the persons of whom they borrow. Take an instance. The money that is borrowed by accumulators engaged in trade, of whom is it borrowed principally? of persons who spend all their income? No, but of other accumulators -- of other persons as great accumulators as themselves: of shopkeepers or wholesale dealers in the way of goods ordered on credit: or of bankers or merchants in the way of discount. And thus far, therefore,