Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
It has a parallel in the economical history of ancient Athens, and in the "scaling of debts," to use the American equivalent for Seisachtheia, by the legislation of Solon. What prevents our supposing that usury, when it first made its appearance on the scene, before people had learned to draw the distinction between crimes and defaults, presented itself in a very coarse and cruel form?
It existed, undoubtedly, in ancient days, for its correlative, Debt, existed; and we know, that, among the Jews, Moses enacted a sponging law, which was to be carried into effect every fifty years; that Solon, among the Greeks, began his administration with the Seisachtheia, or relief-laws, designed to rescue the poor borrowers from their overbearing creditors; and that the usurers were a numerous class at Rome, where also the Patrician houses were immense debtor-prisons.
Does it cover and warrant so sweeping a measure as the old seisachtheia of Solon, voiding all contracts in which the debtor had pledged his land or his person; or such measures as the agrarian laws of Licinius and the Gracchi? Or is it to go no further than to condemn such a law as that which in England gives unwilled lands to the eldest son?
Never to my soul was dear With a tyrant's force to govern, nor to see the good and base Side by side in equal portion share the rich home of our race. Once more he speaks of the abolition of debts and of those who before were in servitude, but were released owing to the Seisachtheia: Of all the aims for which I summoned forth The people, was there one I compassed not?
However, not long afterwards, they perceived the public benefits which he had conferred upon them, forgot their private grievances, and made a public sacrifice in honour of the Seisachtheia, or "Relief from burdens."
It so happened that, when he was about to enact the Seisachtheia, he communicated his intention to some members of the upper class, whereupon, as the partisans of the popular party say, his friends stole a march on him; while those who wish to attack his character maintain that he too had a share in the fraud himself.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking