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In time past it was sors pro sorte that is, the principal only for the principal; but now, beside that which is above the principal properly called Usura, we challenge Foenus that is, commodity of soil and fruits of the earth, If not the ground itself.
OBSERVATION. The forms of increase known as farm-rent, income, and interest are paid annually; rent is paid by the week, the month, or the year; profits and gains are paid at the time of exchange. Thus, the amount of increase is proportional both to the thing increased, and the time during which it increases; in other words, usury grows like a cancer foenus serpit sicut cancer.
Suppose him not to lock it up, but to buy a hen, and the hen to lay a dozen eggs; one of those eggs will be so much per cent.; and the thing borrowed has then produced its own foenus. A still greater inconsistency was this: Our ancestors would have rejoined that many people did not borrow in order to produce, i. e. to use the money as capital, but in order to spend, i. e. to use it as income.
This is, doubtless, the idea that Papinius intended to convey in the phrase, as elegant as it is forcible Foenus mordet solidam. I beg pardon for using Latin so frequently in discussing this subject; it is an homage which I pay to the most usurious nation that ever existed. Property is impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing.
In that case, at least, the borrowers must derive the foenus from some other fund than the thing borrowed: for, by the supposition, the thing borrowed has been spent. True; but on the same principle these ancestors ought to have forbidden every man to sell any article whatsoever to him who paid for it out of other funds than those produced by the article sold.
Hinc usura vorax, rapidumque in tempore foenus, Hinc concussa fides, et multis utile bellum. This same multis utile bellum, is an assured and infallible sign, of a state disposed to seditions and troubles. And if this poverty and broken estate in the better sort, be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great. For the rebellions of the belly are the worst.
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