I.  ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF HOSTILITY TO LOANS AT INTEREST.



Among questions on which the supporters of right reason in

political and social science have only conquered theological

opposition after centuries of war, is the taking of interest on

loans.  In hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the letter

of our sacred books been more prolonged and injurious.



Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be

that of St. Vincent of Lerins--that it has been held in the

Church "always, everywhere, and by all"--then on no point may a

Christian of these days be more sure than that every savings

institution, every loan and trust company, every bank, every loan

of capital by an individual, every means by which accumulated

capital has been lawfully lent even at the most moderate

interest, to make men workers rather than paupers, is based on

deadly sin.



The early evolution of the belief that taking interest for money

is sinful presents a curious working together of metaphysical,

theological, and humanitarian ideas.



In the main centre of ancient Greek civilization, the loaning of

money at interest came to be accepted at an early period as a

condition of productive industry, and no legal restriction was

imposed.  In Rome there was a long process of development:  the

greed of creditors in early times led to laws against the taking

of interest; but, though these lasted long, that strong

practical sense which gave Rome the empire of the world

substituted finally, for this absolute prohibition, the

establishment of rates by law.  Yet many of the leading Greek and

Roman thinkers opposed this practical settlement of the question,

and, foremost of all, Aristotle.  In a metaphysical way he

declared that money is by nature "barren"; that the birth of

money from money is therefore "unnatural"; and hence that the

taking of interest is to be censured and hated.  Plato, Plutarch,

both the Catos, Cicero, Seneca, and various other leaders of

ancient thought, arrived at much the same conclusion--sometimes

from sympathy with oppressed debtors; sometimes from dislike of

usurers; sometimes from simple contempt of trade.



From these sources there came into the early Church the germ of a

theological theory upon the subject.



But far greater was the stream of influence from the Jewish and

Christian sacred books.  In the Old Testament stood various

texts condemning usury--the term usury meaning any taking of

interest: the law of Moses, while it allowed usury in dealing

with strangers, forbade it in dealing with Jews.  In the New

Testament, in the Sermon on the Mount, as given by St. Luke,

stood the text "Lend, hoping for nothing again."  These texts

seemed to harmonize with the most beautiful characteristic of

primitive Christianity; its tender care for the poor and

oppressed:  hence we find, from the earliest period, the whole

weight of the Church brought to bear against the taking of

interest for money.[448]



[448] On the general allowance of interest for money in Greece,

even at high rates, see Bockh, Public Economy of the Athenians,

translated by Lamb, Boston, 1857, especially chaps. xxii, xxiii,

and xxiv of book i.  For a view of usury taken by Aristotle, see

his Politics and Economics, translated by Walford, p. 27; also

Grote, History of Greece, vol. iii, chap. xi.  For summary of

opinions in Greece and Rome, and their relation to Christian

thought, see Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest, translated by

Smart, London, 1890, chap. i.  For a very full list of scripture

texts against the taking of interest, see Pearson, The Theories

on Usury in Europe, 1100-1400, Cambridge (England), 1876, p. 6.

The texts most frequently cited were Leviticus xxv, 36, 37;

Deuteronomy xxiii, 19 and 26; Psalms, xv, 5; Ezekiel xviii, 8 and

17; St. Luke, vi, 35.  For a curious modern use of them, see D.

S. Dickinson's speech in the State of New York, in vol. i of his

collected writings.  See also Lecky, History of Rationalism in

Europe, vol. ii, chap. vi; and above all, as the most recent

historical summary by a leading historian of political economy,

Bohm-Bawerk, as above.





The great fathers of the Eastern Church, and among them St.

Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Gregory of Nyssa,--the fathers of

the Western Church, and among them Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St.

Augustine, and St. Jerome, joined most earnestly in this

condemnation.  St. Basil denounces money at interest as a "fecund

monster," and says, "The divine law declares expressly, `Thou

shalt not lend on usury to thy brother or thy neighbour.'" St.

Gregory of Nyssa calls down on him who lends money at interest

the vengeance of the Almighty.  St. Chrysostom says:  "What can

be more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain,

without ploughs?   All those who give themselves up to this

damnable culture shall reap only tares.  Let us cut off these

monstrous births of gold and silver; let us stop this execrable

fecundity."



Lactantius called the taking of interest "robbery."  St. Ambrose

declared it as bad as murder, St. Jerome threw the argument into

the form of a dilemma, which was used as a weapon against

money-lenders for centuries.  Pope Leo the Great solemnly

adjudged it a sin worthy of severe punishment.[449]



[449] For St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa, see French

translation of their diatribes in Homelies contre les Usuriers,

Paris, Hachette, 1861-'62, especially p. 30 of St. Basil.  For

some doubtful reservations by St. Augustine, see Murray, History

of Usury.  For St. Ambrose, see De Officiis, lib. iii, cap. ii,

in Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xvi; also the De Tobia, in Migne, vol.

xiv.  For St. Augustine, see De Bapt. contr Donat., lib. iv, cap.

ix, in Migne, vol. xliii.  For Lactantius, see his Opera, Leyden,

1660, p. 608.  For Cyprian, see his Testimonies against the Jews,

translated by Wallis, book iii, article 48.  For St. Jerome, see

his Com. in Ezekiel, xviii, 8, in Migne, vol. xxv, pp. 170 et

seq.  For Leo the Great, see his letter to the bishops of various

provinces of Italy, cited in the Jus. Can., cap. vii, can. xiv,

qu. 4.  For very fair statements of the attitude of the fathers

on this question, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary,

London, 1884, and Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian

Antiquities, London, 1875-'80; in each, under article Usury.





This unanimity of the fathers of the Church brought about a

crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into

numberless decrees of popes and councils and kings and

legislatures throughout Christendom during more than fifteen

hundred years, and the canon law was shaped in accordance with

these.  At first these were more especially directed against the

clergy, but we soon find them extending to the laity.  These

prohibitions were enforced by the Council of Arles in 314, and a

modern Church apologist insists that every great assembly of the

Church, from the Council of Elvira in 306 to that of Vienne in

1311, inclusive, solemnly condemned lending money at interest.

The greatest rulers under the sway of the Church--Justinian, in

the Empire of the East; Charlemagne, in the Empire of the West;

Alfred, in England; St. Louis, in France--yielded fully to this

dogma.  In the ninth century Alfred went so far as to confiscate

the estates of money-lenders, denying them burial in Consecrated

ground; and similar decrees were made in other parts of Europe.

In the twelfth century the Greek Church seems to have relaxed its

strictness somewhat, but the Roman Church grew more severe.  St.

Anselm proved from the Scriptures that the taking of interest is

a breach of the Ten Commandments.  Peter Lombard, in his

Sentences, made the taking of interest purely and simply theft.

St. Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in the Church, took

the same view.  In 1179 the Third Council of the Lateran decreed

that impenitent money-lenders should be excluded from the altar,

from absolution in the hour of death, and from Christian burial.

Pope Urban III reiterated the declaration that the passage in St.

Luke forbade the taking of any interest whatever.  Pope

Alexander III declared that the prohibition in this matter could

never be suspended by dispensation.



In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX dealt an especially

severe blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance

on interest the money necessary in maritime trade was damnable

usury; and this was fitly followed by Gregory X, who forbade

Christian burial to those guilty of this practice; the Council

of Lyons meted out the same penalty.  This idea was still more

firmly fastened upon the world by the two greatest thinkers of

the time: first, by St. Thomas Aquinas, who knit it into the mind

of the Church by the use of the Scriptures and of Aristotle; and

next by Dante, who pictured money-lenders in one of the worst

regions of hell.



About the beginning of the fourteenth century the "Subtile

Doctor" of the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, gave to the world an

exquisite piece of reasoning in evasion of the accepted doctrine;

but all to no purpose:  the Council of Vienne, presided over by

Pope Clement V, declared that if any one "shall pertinaciously

presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money is not a

sin, we decree him to be a heretic, fit for punishment."  This

infallible utterance bound the dogma with additional force on the

conscience of the universal Church.



Nor was this a doctrine enforced by rulers only; the people were

no less strenuous.  In 1390 the city authorities of London

enacted that, "if any person shall lend or put into the hands of

any person gold or silver to receive gain thereby, such person

shall have the punishment for usurers."  And in the same year the

Commons prayed the king that the laws of London against usury

might have the force of statutes throughout the realm.



In the fifteenth century the Council of the Church at Salzburg

excluded from communion and burial any who took interest for

money, and this was a very general rule throughout Germany.



An exception was, indeed, sometimes made:  some canonists held

that Jews might be allowed to take interest, since they were to

be damned in any case, and their monopoly of money-lending might

prevent Christians from losing their souls by going into the

business.  Yet even the Jews were from time to time punished for

the crime of usury; and, as regards Christians, punishment was

bestowed on the dead as well as the living--the bodies of dead

money-lenders being here and there dug up and cast out of

consecrated ground.



The popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who took

interest.  The medieval anecdote books for pulpit use are

especially full on this point.  Jacques de Vitry tells us that

demons on one occasion filled a dead money-lender's mouth with

red-hot coins; Cesarius of Heisterbach declared that a toad was

found thrusting a piece of money into a dead usurer's heart; in

another case, a devil was seen pouring molten gold down a dead

money-lender's throat.[450]



[450] For an enumeration of councils condemning the taking of

interest for money, see Liegeois, Essai sur l'Histoire et la

Legislation de l'Usure, Paris, 1865, p. 78; also the Catholic

Dictionary as above.  For curious additional details and sources

regarding mediaeval horror of usurers, see Ducange, Glossarium,

etc., article Caorcini. T he date 306, for the Council of Elvira

is that assigned by Hefele.  For the decree of Alexander III, see

citation from the Latin text in Lecky.  For a long catalogue of

ecclesiastical and civil decrees against taking of interest, see

Petit, Traite de l'Usure, Paris, 1840.  For the reasoning at the

bottom of this, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion on Usury,

London, 1884.  For the Salzburg decrees, see Zillner,

Salzburgusche Culturgeschichte, p. 232; and for Germany

generally, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland,

Halle, 1865, especially pp. 22 et seq; also Roscher, National-

Oeconomis. For effect of mistranslation of the passage of Luke in

the Vulgate, see Dollinger, p. 170, and especially pp. 224, 225

For the capitularies of Charlemagne against usury, see Liegeois,

p. 77.  For Gregory X and the Council of Lyons, see Sextus

Decretalium liber, pp. 669 et. seq.  For Peter Lombard, see his

Lib. Sententiarum, III, dist. xxxvii, 3.  For St. Thomas Aquinas,

see his works, Migne, vol. iii, Paris 1889, quaestio 78, pp. 587

et seq., citing the Scriptures and Aristotle, and especially

developing Aristotle's metaphysical idea regarding the

"barrenness" of money.  For a very good summary of St. Thomas's

ideas, see Pearson. pp. 30 et seq.  For Dante, see in canto xi of

the Inferno a revelation of the amazing depth of the hostility to

the taking of interest.  For the London law of 1390 and the

petition to the king, see Cunningham, Growth of English Industry

and Commerce, pp. 210, 326; also the Abridgment of the Records in

the Tower of London, p. 339.  For the theory that Jews, being

damned already, might be allowed to practice usury, see Liegeois,

Histoire de l'Usure, p. 82.  For St. Bernard's view, see Epist.

CCCLXIII, in Migne, vol. clxxxii, p. 567.  For ideas and

anecdotes for preachers' use, see Joannes a San Geminiano, Summa

de Exemplis, Antwerp, 1629, fol. 493, a; also the edition of

Venice, 1584, ff. 132, 159; but especially, for multitudes of

examples, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T.

F. Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp. 203 et seq.

For the canon law in regard to interest, see a long line of

authorities cited in Die Wucherfrage, St. Louis, 1869, pp. 92 et

seq., and especially Decret. Gregor., lib.v, lit. 19, cap. iii,

and Clementin., lib. v, lit. 5, sec. 2; see also the Corpus Juris

Canonici, Paris, 1618, pp. 227, 228.  For the position of the

English Church, see Gibson's Corpus Juris Ecclesiastici

Anglicani, pp. 1070, 1071, 1106.





This theological hostility to the taking of interest was imbedded

firmly in the canon law.  Again and again it defined usury to be

the taking of anything of value beyond the exact original amount

of a loan; and under sanction of the universal Church it

denounced this as a crime and declared all persons defending it

to be guilty of heresy.  What this meant the world knows but too

well.



The whole evolution of European civilization was greatly hindered

by this conscientious policy.  Money could only be loaned in

most countries at the risk of incurring odium in this world and

damnation in the next; hence there was but little capital and

few lenders.  The rates of interest became at times enormous; as

high as forty per cent in England, and ten per cent a month in

Italy and Spain.  Commerce, manufactures, and general enterprise

were dwarfed, while pauperism flourished.



Yet worse than these were the moral results.  Doing what one

holds to be evil is only second in bad consequences to doing what

is really evil; hence, all lending and borrowing, even for the

most legitimate purposes and at the most reasonable rates, tended

to debase both borrower and lender.  The prohibition of lending

at interest in continental Europe promoted luxury and discouraged

economy; the rich, who were not engaged in business, finding no

easy way of employing their incomes productively, spent them

largely in ostentation and riotous living.  One evil effect is

felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews, so acute

in intellect and strong in will, were virtually drawn or driven

out of all other industries or professions by the theory that

their race, being accursed, was only fitted for the abhorred

profession of money-lending.[451]



[451] For evil economic results, and especially for the rise of

the rate of interest in England and elsewhere at times to forty

per cent, see Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and

Commerce, Cambridge, 1890, p. 189; and for its rising to ten per

cent a month, see Bedarride, Les Juifs en France, en Italie, at

en Espagne, p. 220; see also Hallam's Middle Ages, London, 1853,

pp. 401, 402.  For the evil moral effects of the Church doctrine

against taking interest, see Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, lib.

xxi, chap. xx; see also Sismondi, cited in Lecky.  For the

trifling with conscience, distinction between "consumptibles" and

"fungibles," "possessio" and "dominium," etc., see Ashley,

English Economic History, New York, pp. 152, 153; see also

Leopold Delisle, Etudes, pp. 198, 468.  For the effects of these

doctrines on the Jews, see Milman, History of the Jews, vol. iii,

p. 179; also Wellhausen, History of Israel, London, 1885, p. 546;

also Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris, 1824, pt. 2, p. 114

(on driving Jews out of other industries than money-lending).

For a noted mediaeval evasion of the Church rules against usury,

see Peruzzi, Storia del Commercio e dei Banchieri di Firenze,

Florence, 1868, pp. 172, 173.





These evils were so manifest, when trade began to revive

throughout Europe in the fifteenth century, that

most earnest exertions were put forth to induce the Church to

change its position.



The first important effort of this kind was made by John Gerson.

His general learning made him Chancellor of the University of

Paris; his sacred learning made him the leading orator at the

Council of Constance; his piety led men to attribute to him The

Imitation of Christ.  Shaking off theological shackles, he

declared, "Better is it to lend money at reasonable interest, and

thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them reduced by poverty

to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price their

personal and real property."



But this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the

Scriptures, the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law.

Even in the most active countries there seemed to be no hope.  In

England, under Henry VII, Cardinal Morton, the lord chancellor,

addressed Parliament, asking it to take into consideration loans

of money at interest.  The result was a law which imposed on

lenders at interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides the

annulment of the loan; and, to show that there was an offence

against religion involved, there was added a clause "reserving to

the Church, notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of

their souls according to the laws of the same."



Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various parts

of Europe; and just when the trade, commerce, and manufactures

of the modern epoch had received an immense impulse from the

great series of voyages of discovery by such men as Columbus,

Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and the Cabots, this barrier against

enterprise was strengthened by a decree from no less enlightened

a pontiff than Leo X.



The popular feeling warranted such decrees.  As late as the end

of the Middle Ages we find the people of Piacenza dragging the

body of a money-lender out of his grave in consecrated ground and

throwing it into the river Po, in order to stop a prolonged

rainstorm; and outbreaks of the same spirit were frequent in

other countries. [452]



[452] For Gerson's argument favouring a reasonable rate of

interest, see Coquelin and Guillaumin, Dictionnaire, article

Interet. For the renewed opposition to the taking of interest in

England, see Craik, History of British Commerce, chap. vi. The

statute cited is 3 Henry VII, chap. vi; it is found in Gibson's

Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071. For the adverse decree of

Leo X, see Liegeois, p. 76. See also Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii.

For the dragging out of the usurer's body at Piacenza, see

Burckhardt, The Renaissance in Italy, London, 1878, vol. ii, p.

339. For public opinion of similar strength on this subject in

England, see Cunningham, p. 239; also Pike, History of Crime in

England, vol. i, pp. 127, 193. For good general observations on

the same, see Stephen, History of Criminal Law in England,

London, 1883, vol. iii, pp. 195-197. For usury laws in Castile

and Aragon, see Bedarride, pp. 191, 192. For exceedingly valuable

details as to the attitude of the mediaeval Church, see Leopold

Delisle, Etudes sur la Classe Agricole en Normandie au Moyen Age,

Evreux, 1851, pp. 200 et seq., also p. 468. For penalties in

France, see Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, in the Rolls Series,

especially vol. iii, pp. 191, 192. For a curious evasion,

sanctioned by Popes Martin V and Calixtus III when Church

corporations became money-lenders, see H. C. Lea on The

Ecclesiastical Treatment of Usury, in the Yale Review for

February, 1894. For a detailed development of interesting

subordinate points, see Ashley, Introduction to English Economic

History and Theory, vol. ii, ch, vi.





Another mode of obtaining relief was tried.  Subtle theologians

devised evasions of various sorts.  Two among these inventions

of the schoolmen obtained much notoriety.



The first was the doctrine of "damnum emergens":  if a lender

suffered loss by the failure of the borrower to return a loan at

a date named, compensation might be made.  Thus it was that, if

the nominal date of payment was made to follow quickly after the

real date of the loan, the compensation for the anticipated delay

in payment had a very strong resemblance to interest.  Equally

cogent was the doctrine of "lucrum cessans":  if a man, in order

to lend money, was obliged to diminish his income from productive

enterprises, it was claimed that he might receive in return, in

addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this diminution

in his income.



But such evasions were looked upon with little favour by the

great body of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas

was triumphantly cited against them.



Opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was

not confined to the older Church.  Protestantism was led by

Luther and several of his associates into the same line of

thought and practice.  Said Luther.  "To exchange anything with

any one and gain by the exchange is not to do a charity; but to

steal.  Every usurer is a thief worthy of the gibbet.  I call

those usurers who lend money at five or six per cent."  But it is

only just to say that at a later period Luther took a much more

moderate view.  Melanchthon, defining usury as any interest

whatever, condemned it again and again; and the Goldberg

Catechism of 1558, for which he wrote a preface and

recommendation, declares every person taking interest for money a

thief.  From generation to generation this doctrine was upheld by

the more eminent divines of the Lutheran Church in all parts of

Germany.  The English reformers showed the same hostility to

interest-bearing loans.  Under Henry VIII the law of Henry VII

against taking interest had been modified for the better; but

the revival of religious feeling under Edward VI caused in 1552

the passage of the "Bill of Usury."  In this it is said,

"Forasmuch as usury is by the word of God utterly prohibited, as

a vice most odious and detestable, as in divers places of the

Holy Scriptures it is evident to be seen, which thing by no godly

teachings and persuasions can sink into the hearts of divers

greedy, uncharitable, and covetous persons of this realm, nor

yet, by any terrible threatenings of God's wrath and vengeance,"

etc., it is enacted that whosoever shall thereafter lend money

"for any manner of usury, increase, lucre, gain, or interest, to

be had, received, or hoped for," shall forfeit principal and

interest, and suffer imprisonment and fine at the king's

pleasure.[453]



[453] For Luther's views, see his sermon, Von dem Wucher,

Wittenberg, 1519; also the Table Talk, cited in Coquelin and

Guillaumin, article Interet.  For the later, more moderate views

of Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, making a compromise with the

needs of society, see Bohm-Bawerk, p. 27, citing Wiskemann.  For

Melanchthon and a long line of the most eminent Lutheran divines

who have denounced the taking of interest, see Die Wucherfrage,

St. Louis, 1869, pp. 94 et seq.  For the law against usury under

Edward VI, see Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. i, p. 596;

see also Craik, History of British Commerce, chap. vi.





But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin, though at times

stumbling over the usual texts against the taking of interest for

money, turned finally in the right direction.  He cut through the

metaphysical arguments of Aristotle, and characterized the

subtleties devised to evade the Scriptures as "a childish game

with God."  In place of these subtleties there was developed

among Protestants a serviceable fiction--the statement that usury

means ILLEGAL OR OPPRESSIVE INTEREST.  Under the action of this

fiction, commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant

countries, though with occasional checks from exact interpreters

of Scripture.  At the same period in France, the great Protestant

jurist Dumoulin brought all his legal learning and skill in

casuistry to bear on the same side.  A certain ferretlike

acuteness and litheness seem to have enabled him to hunt down the

opponents of interest-taking through the most tortuous arguments

of scholasticism.



In England the struggle went on with varying fortune; statesmen

on one side, and theologians on the other.  We have seen how,

under Henry VIII, interest was allowed at a fixed rate, and how,

the development of English Protestantism having at first

strengthened the old theological view, there was, under Edward

VI, a temporarily successful attempt to forbid the taking of

interest by law.



The Puritans, dwelling on Old Testament texts, continued for a

considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any

interest.  Henry Smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the

pulpit of St. Clement Danes in London against "the evasions of

Scripture" which permitted men to lend money on interest at all.

In answer to the contention that only "biting" usury was

oppressive, Wilson, a noted upholder of the strict theological

view in political economy, declared:  "There is difference in

deed between the bite of a dogge and the bite of a flea, and yet,

though the flea doth lesse harm, yet the flea doth bite after hir

kinde, yea, and draweth blood, too.  But what a world this is,

that men will make sin to be but a fleabite, when they see God's

word directly against them!"



The same view found strong upholders among contemporary English

Catholics.  One of the most eminent of these, Nicholas Sanders,

revived very vigorously the use of an old scholastic argument.

He insisted that "man can not sell time," that time is not a

human possession, but something which is given by God alone:  he

declared, "Time was not of your gift to your neighbour, but of

God's gift to you both."



In the Parliament of the period, we find strong assertions of the

old idea, with constant reference to Scripture and the fathers.

In one debate, Wilson cited from Ezekiel and other prophets and

attributed to St. Augustine the doctrine that "to take but a

cup of wine is usury and damnable."  Fleetwood recalled the law

of King Edward the Confessor, which submitted usurers to the

ordeal.



But arguments of this sort had little influence upon Elizabeth

and her statesmen.  Threats of damnation in the next world

troubled them little if they could have their way in this.  They

re-established the practice of taking interest under

restrictions, and this, in various forms, has remained in England

ever since.  Most notable in this phase of the evolution of

scientific doctrine in political economy at that period is the

emergence of a recognised difference between USURY and

INTEREST. Between these two words, which had so long been

synonymous, a distinction now appears:  the former being

construed to indicate OPPRESSIVE INTEREST, and the latter JUST

RATES for the use of money.  This idea gradually sank into the

popular mind of Protestant countries, and the scriptural texts no

longer presented any difficulty to the people at large, since

there grew up a general belief that the word "usury," as employed

in Scripture, had ALWAYS meant exorbitant interest; and this in

spite of the parable of the Talents.  Still, that the old

Aristotelian quibble had not been entirely forgotten, is clearly

seen by various passages in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

But this line of reasoning seems to have received its quietus

from Lord Bacon.  He did not, indeed, develop a strong and

connected argument on the subject; but he burst the bonds of

Aristotle, and based interest for money upon natural laws.  How

powerful the new current of thought was, is seen from the fact

that James I, of all monarchs the most fettered by scholasticism

and theology, sanctioned a statute dealing with interest for

money as absolutely necessary.  Yet, even after this, the old

idea asserted itself; for the bishops utterly refused to agree to

the law allowing interest until a proviso was inserted that

"nothing in this law contained shall be construed or expounded to

allow the practice of usury in point of religion or conscience."

The old view cropped out from time to time in various public

declarations.  Famous among these were the Treatise of Usury,

published in 1612 by Dr. Fenton, who restated the old arguments

with much force, and the Usury Condemned of John Blaxton,

published in 1634.  Blaxton, who also was a clergyman, defined

usury as the taking of any interest whatever for money, citing in

support of this view six archbishops and bishops and over thirty

doctors of divinity in the Anglican Church, some of their

utterances being very violent and all of them running their roots

down into texts of Scripture.  Typical among these is a sermon

of Bishop Sands, in which he declares, regarding the taking of

interest:  "This canker hath corrupted all England; we shall doe

God and our country true service by taking away this evill;

represse it by law, else the heavy hand of God hangeth over us

and will strike us."







II.  RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.



But about the middle of the seventeenth century Sir Robert Filmer

gave this doctrine the heaviest blow it ever received in England.

Taking up Dr. Fenton's treatise, he answered it, and all works

like it, in a way which, however unsuitable to this century, was

admirably adapted to that.  He cites Scripture and chops logic

after a masterly manner.  Characteristic is this declaration:

"St. Paul doth, with one breath, reckon up seventeen sins, and

yet usury is none of them; but many preachers can not reckon up

seven deadly sins, except they make usury one of them."  Filmer

followed Fenton not only through his theology, but through his

political economy, with such relentless keenness that the old

doctrine seems to have been then and there practically worried

out of existence, so far as England was concerned.



Departures from the strict scriptural doctrines regarding

interest soon became frequent in Protestant countries, and they

were followed up with especial vigour in Holland.  Various

theologians in the Dutch Church attempted to assert the

scriptural view by excluding bankers from the holy communion;

but the commercial vigour of the republic was too strong:

Salmasius led on the forces of right reason brilliantly, and by

the middle of the seventeenth century the question was settled

rightly in that country.  This work was aided, indeed, by a far

greater man, Hugo Grotius; but here was shown the power of an

established dogma.  Great as Grotius was--and it may well be held

that his book on War and Peace has wrought more benefit to

humanity than any other attributed to human authorship--he was,

in the matter of interest for money, too much entangled in

theological reasoning to do justice to his cause or to himself.

He declared the prohibition of it to be scriptural, but resisted

the doctrine of Aristotle, and allowed interest on certain

natural and practical grounds.



In Germany the struggle lasted longer.  Of some little

significance, perhaps, is the demand of Adam Contzen, in 1629,

that lenders at interest should be punished as thieves; but by

the end of the seventeenth century Puffendorf and Leibnitz had

gained the victory.



Protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought,

could not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavourable

to economic development, and perhaps the most remarkable proof of

this was presented early in the eighteenth century in America, by

no less strict a theologian than Cotton Mather.  In his

Magnalia he argues against the whole theological view with a

boldness, acuteness, and good sense which cause us to wonder that

this can be the same man who was so infatuated regarding

witchcraft.   After an argument so conclusive as his, there could

have been little left of the old anti-economic doctrine in New

England.[454]



[454] For Calvin's views, see his letter published in the

appendix to Pearson's Theories on Usury.  His position is well-

stated in Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 28 et seq., where citations are given.

See also Economic Tracts, No. IV, New York, 1881, pp. 34, 35; and

for some serviceable Protestant fictions, see Cunningham,

Christian Opinion on Usury, pp. 60, 61. For  Dumoulin

(Molinaeus), see Bohm-Bawerk, as above, pp. 29 et seq.  For

debates on usury in the British Parliament in Elizabeth's time,

see Cobbett, Parliamentary History, vol. i, pp 756 et seq.  A

striking passage in Shakespeare is found in the Merchant of

Venice, Act I, scene iii: "If thou wilt lend this money, lend it

not as to thy friend; for when did friendship take a breed for

barren metal of his friend?"  For the right direction taken by

Lord Bacon, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland,

Halle, 1864, pp. 497, 498.  For Salmasius, see his De Usuris,

Leyden, 1638, and for others mentioned, see Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 34

et seq.; also Lecky, vol. ii. p. 256.  For the saving clause

inderted by the bishops in the statute of James I, see the Corpus

Juris Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071; also Murray, History of Usury,

Philadelphia, 1866, p. 49.



For Blaxton, see his English Usurer, or Usury Condemned, by John

Blaxton, Preacher of God's Word, London, 1634. Blaxton gives some

of Calvin's earlier utterances against interest.  For Bishop

Sands;s sermon, see p. 11. For Filmer, see his Quaestio

Quodlibetica, London, 1652, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany,

vol.x, pp. 105 et seq.  For Grotius, see the De Jure Belli ac

Pacis, lib. ii, cap.xii.  For Cotton Mather's argument, see the

Magnalia, London, 1702, pp. 5, 52.





But while the retreat of the Protestant Church from the old

doctrine regarding the taking of interest was henceforth easy, in

the Catholic Church it was far more difficult.  Infallible popes

and councils, with saints, fathers, and doctors, had so

constantly declared the taking of any interest at all to be

contrary to Scripture, that the more exact though less fortunate

interpretation of the sacred text relating to interest continued

in Catholic countries.  When it was attempted in France in the

seventeenth century to argue that usury "means oppressive

interest," the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declared that

usury is the taking of any interest at all, no matter how little;

and the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to clinch this

argument.



Another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce was

made by declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as a

matter of favour but as a matter of right."  This, too, was

solemnly condemned by Pope innocent XI.



Again an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty by

declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows."

This, too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that

"usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time."



Still the forces of right reason pressed on, and among them, in

the seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon.  He

attempted to gloss over the declarations of Scripture against

lending at interest, in an elaborate treatise, but was

immediately confronted by Bossuet.  Just as Bossuet had mingled

Scripture with astronomy and opposed the Copernican theory, so

now he mingled Scripture with political economy and denounced the

lending of money at interest.  He called attention to the fact

that the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the

beginning, the popes, the fathers, had all interpreted the

prohibition of "usury" to be a prohibition of any lending at

interest; and he demonstrated this interpretation to be the true

one.  Simon was put to confusion and his book condemned.



There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation.

There stood the fact that the prohibition of one of the most

simple and beneficial principles in political and economical

science was affirmed, not only by the fathers, but by

twenty-eight councils of the Church, six of them general

councils, and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of innumerable

doctors in theology and canon law.  And these prohibitions by the

Church had been accepted as of divine origin by all obedient sons

of the Church in the government of France.  Such rulers as

Charles the Bald in the ninth century, and St. Louis in the

thirteenth, had riveted this idea into the civil law so firmly

that it seemed impossible ever to detach it.[455]



[455] For the declaration of the Sorbonne in the seventeenth

century against taking of interest, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol.

ii, p. 248, note.  For the special condemnation by Innocent XI,

see Viva, Damnatae Theses, Pavia, 1715, pp. 112-114.  For

consideration of various ways of escaping the difficulty

regarding interest, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii, pp. 249,

250.  For Bousset's strong declaration against taking interest,

see his Oeuvres, Paris, 1845-'46, vol. i, p. 734, vol. vi, p.

654, and vol. ix, p. 49 et seq.  For the number of councils and

popes condemning usury, see Lecky,as above, vol. ii, p. 255,

note, citing Concina.





As might well be expected, Italy was one of the countries in

which the theological theory regarding usury--lending at

interest--was most generally asserted and assented to.  Among

the great number of Italian canonists who supported the theory,

two deserve especial mention, as affording a contrast to the

practical manner in which the commercial Italians met the

question.



In the sixteenth century, very famous among canonists was the

learned Benedictine, Vilagut.  In 1589 he published at Venice

his great work on usury, supporting with much learning and vigour

the most extreme theological consequences of the old doctrine.

He defines usury as the taking of anything beyond the original

loan, and declares it mortal sin; he advocates the denial to

usurers of Christian burial, confession, the sacraments,

absolution, and connection with the universities; he declares

that priests receiving offerings from usurers should refrain from

exercising their ministry until the matter is passed upon by the

bishop.



About the middle of the seventeenth century another ponderous

folio was published in Venice upon the same subject and with the

same title, by Onorato Leotardi.  So far from showing any signs

of yielding, he is even more extreme than Vilagut had been, and

quotes with approval the old declaration that lenders of money at

interest are not only robbers but murderers.



So far as we can learn, no real opposition was made in either

century to this theory, as a theory; as to PRACTICE, it was

different.  The Italian traders did not answer theological

argument; they simply overrode it.  In spite of theology, great

banks were established, and especially that of Venice at the end

of the twelfth century, and those of Barcelona and Genoa at the

beginning of the fifteenth.  Nowhere was commerce carried on in

more complete defiance of this and other theological theories

hampering trade than in the very city where these great treatises

were published.  The sin of usury, like the sin of commerce with

the Mohammedans, seems to have been settled for by the Venetian

merchants on their deathbeds; and greatly to the advantage of

the magnificent churches and ecclesiastical adornments of the

city.



By the seventeenth century the clearest thinkers in the Roman

Church saw that her theology must be readjusted to political

economy:  so began a series of amazing attempts to reconcile a

view permitting usury with the long series of decrees of popes

and councils forbidding it.



In Spain, the great Jesuit casuist Escobar led the way, and

rarely had been seen such exquisite hair-splitting.  But his

efforts were not received with the gratitude they perhaps

deserved.  Pascal, revolting at their moral effect, attacked

them unsparingly in his Provincial Letters, citing especially

such passages as the following:  "It is usury to receive profit

from those to whom one lends, if it be exacted as justly due;

but, if it be exacted as a debt of gratitude, it is not usury."

This and a multitude of similar passages Pascal covered with the

keen ridicule and indignant denunciation of which he was so great

a master.



But even the genius of Pascal could not stop such efforts.  In

the eighteenth century they were renewed by a far greater

theologian than Escobar--by him who was afterward made a saint

and proclaimed a doctor of the Church--Alphonso Liguori.



Starting with bitter denunciations of usury, Liguori soon

developed a multitude of subtle devices for escaping the guilt of

it.  Presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental, usury"

he arrives at the conclusion that, if the borrower pay interest

of his own free will, the lender may keep it.  In answer to the

question whether the lender may keep what the borrower paid, not

out of gratitude but out of fear--fear that otherwise loans might

be refused him in future--Liguori says, "To be usury it must be

paid by reason of a contract, or as justly due; payment by

reason of such a fear does not cause interest to be paid as an

actual price."  Again Liguori tells us, "It is not usury to exact

something in return for the danger and expense of regaining the

principal."  The old subterfuges of "Damnum emergens" and "Lucrum

cessans" are made to do full duty.  A remarkable quibble is

found in the answer to the question whether he sins who furnishes

money to a man whom he knows to intend employing it in usury.

After citing affirmative opinions from many writers, Liguori

says, "Notwithstanding these opinions, the better opinion seems

to me to be that the man thus putting out his money is not bound

to make restitution, for his action is not injurious to the

borrower, but rather favourable to him," and this reasoning the

saint develops at great length.



In the Latin countries this sort of casuistry eased the relations

of the Church with the bankers, and it was full time; for now

there came arguments of a different kind.  The eighteenth

century philosophy had come upon the stage, and the first

effective onset of political scientists against the theological

opposition in southern Europe was made in Italy--the most noted

leaders in the attack being Galiani and Maffei.  Here and there

feeble efforts were made to meet them, but it was felt more and

more by thinking churchmen that entirely different tactics must

be adopted.



About the same time came an attack in France, and though its

results were less immediate at home, they were much more

effective abroad.  In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's Spirit of the

Laws.  In this famous book were concentrated twenty years of

study and thought by a great thinker on the interests of the

world about him.  In eighteen months it went through twenty-two

editions; it was translated into every civilized language; and

among the things on which Montesquieu brought his wit and wisdom

to bear with especial force was the doctrine of the Church

regarding interest on loans.  In doing this he was obliged to

use a caution in forms which seems strangely at variance with the

boldness of his ideas.  In view of the strictness of

ecclesiastical control in France, he felt it safest to make his

whole attack upon those theological and economic follies of

Mohammedan countries which were similar to those which the

theological spirit had fastened on France.[456]



[456] For Vilagut, see his Tractatus de Usuris, Venice, 1589,

especially pp. 21, 25, 399.  For Leotardi, see his De Usuris,

Venice, 1655, especially preface, pp. 6, 7 et seq.  For Pascal

and Escobar, see the Provincial Letters, edited by Sayres,

Cambridge, 1880, Letter VIII, pp. 183-186; also a note to the

same letter, p. 196.  For Liguori, see his Theologia Moralis,

Paris, 1834, lib. iii, tract v, cap. iii: De Contractibus, dub,

vii. For the eighteenth century attack in Italy, see Bohm-Bawerk,

pp. 48 et seq.  For Montesquieu's view of interest on loans, see

the Esprit des Lois, livre xxii.





By the middle of the eighteenth century the Church authorities at

Rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession:  the world would

endure theological restriction no longer; a way of escape MUST

be found.  It was seen, even by the most devoted theologians,

that mere denunciations and use of theological arguments or

scriptural texts against the scientific idea were futile.



To this feeling it was due that, even in the first years of the

century, the Jesuit casuists had come to the rescue.  With

exquisite subtlety some of their acutest intellects devoted

themselves to explaining away the utterances on this subject of

saints, fathers, doctors, popes, and councils.  These

explanations were wonderfully ingenious, but many of the older

churchmen continued to insist upon the orthodox view, and at last

the Pope himself intervened.  Fortunately for the world, the seat

of St. Peter was then occupied by Benedict XIV, certainly one of

the most gifted, morally and intellectually, in the whole line of

Roman pontiffs.  Tolerant and sympathetic for the oppressed, he

saw the necessity of taking up the question, and he grappled with

it effectually:  he rendered to Catholicism a service like that

which Calvin had rendered to Protestantism, by shrewdly cutting a

way through the theological barrier.  In 1745 he issued his

encyclical Vix pervenit, which declared that the doctrine of the

Church remained consistent with itself; that usury is indeed a

sin, and that it consists in demanding any amount beyond the

exact amount lent, but that there are occasions when on special

grounds the lender may obtain such additional sum.



What these "occasions" and "special grounds" might be, was left

very vague; but this action was sufficient.



At the same time no new restrictions upon books advocating the

taking of interest for money were imposed, and, in the year

following his encyclical, Benedict openly accepted the dedication

of one of them--the work of Maffei, and perhaps the most cogent

of all.



Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory

for "convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its

condemnation by the Church authorities, this encyclical of Pope

Benedict broke the spell.  Turgot, Quesnay, Adam Smith, Hume,

Bentham, and their disciples pressed on, and science won for

mankind another great victory.[457]



[457] For Quesnay, see his Observations sur l'Interet de

l'Argent, in his Oeuvres, Frankfort and Paris, 1888, pp. 399 et

seq.  For Turgot, see the Collections des Economistes, Paris,

1844, vols. iii and iv; also Blanqui, Histoire de l'Economie

Politique, English translation, p. 373.  For an excellent though

brief summary of the efforts of the Jesuits to explain away the

old action of the Church, see Lecky, vol. ii, pp 256, 257.  For

the action of Benedict XIV, see Reusch, Der Index der Vorbotenen

Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, pp 847, 848.  For a comical picture

of the "quagmire' into which the hierarchy brought itself in the

squaring of its practice with its theory, see Dollinger, as

above, pp. 227, 228.  For cunningly vague statements of the

action of Benedict XIV, see Mastrofini, Sur l'Usure, French

translation, Lyons, 1834, pp. 125, 255.  The abbate, as will be

seen, has not the slightest hesitaion in telling an untruth in

order to preserve the consistency of papal action in the matter

of usury-- e.g., pp. 93, 94 96, and elsewhere.





Yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway of

scientific truth appeared among some overzealous religionists.

When the Sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed

itself with new casuistries against those who held to its earlier

decisions, sundry provincial doctors in theology protested

indignantly, making the old citations from the Scriptures,

fathers, saints, doctors, popes, councils, and canonists.  Again

the Roman court intervened.  In 1830 the Inquisition at Rome,

with the approval of Pius VIII, though still declining to commit

itself on the DOCTRINE involved, decreed that, as to PRACTICE,

confessors should no longer disturb lenders of money at legal

interest.



But even this did not quiet the more conscientious theologians.

The old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the Abbe

Laborde, Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by

the Abbe Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons.  Good Abbe

Dennavit declared that he refused absolution to those who took

interest and to priests who pretend that the sanction of the

civil law is sufficient.



But the "wisdom of the serpent" was again brought into

requisition, and early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the

Abbate Mastrofini issued a work on usury, which, he declared on

its title-page, demonstrated that "moderate usury is not contrary

to Holy Scripture, or natural law, or the decisions of the

Church."  Nothing can be more comical than the suppressions of

truth, evasions of facts, jugglery with phrases, and perversions

of history, to which the abbate is forced to resort throughout

his book in order to prove that the Church has made no mistake.

In the face of scores of explicit deliverances and decrees of

fathers, doctors, popes, and councils against the taking of any

interest whatever for money, he coolly pretended that what they

had declared against was EXORBITANT interest.  He made a merit

of the action of the Church, and showed that its course had been

a blessing to humanity.  But his masterpiece is in dealing with

the edicts of Clement V and Benedict XIV.  As to the first, it

will be remembered that Clement, in accord with the Council of

Vienne, had declared that "any one who shall pertinaciously

presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money is not a

sin, we decree him to be a heiretic fit for punishment," and we

have seen that Benedict XIV did not at all deviate from the

doctrines of his predecessors.  Yet Mastrofini is equal to his

task, and brings out, as the conclusion of his book, the

statement put upon his title-page, that what the Church condemns

is only EXORBITANT interest.



This work was sanctioned by various high ecclesiastical

dignitaries, and served its purpose; for it covered the retreat

of the Church.



In 1872 the Holy Office, answering a question solemnly put by the

Bishop of Ariano, as solemnly declared that those who take eight

per cent interest per annum are "not to be disquieted"; and in

1873 appeared a book published under authority from the Holy See,

allowing the faithful to take moderate interest under condition

that any future decisions of the Pope should be implicitly

obeyed.  Social science as applied to political economy had

gained a victory final and complete.  The Torlonia family at Rome

to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affiliations,

and papal favour--all won by lending money at interest, and by

liberal gifts, from the profits of usury, to the Holy See--is but

one out of many growths of its kind on ramparts long since

surrendered and deserted.[458]



[458] For the decree forbidding confessors to trouble lenders of

money at legal interest, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic

Dictionary, as above; also Mastrofini, as above, in the appendix,

where various other recent Roman decrees are given.  As to the

controversy generally, see Mastrofini; also La Replique des douze

Docteurs, cited by Guillaumin and Coquelin; also Reusch, vol. ii,

p. 850.  As an example of Mastrofini's way of making black appear

white, compare the Latin text of the decree on page 97 with his

statements regarding it; see also his cunning substitution of the

new significance of the word usury for the old in various parts

of his book.  A good historical presentation of the general

subject will be found in Roscher, Geschichte der National-

Oeconomie in Deutschland, Munchen, 1874, under articles Wucher

and Zinsnehmen.  For France, see especially Petit, Traite de

l'Usure, Paris, 1840; and for Germany, see Neumann, Geschichte

des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865.  For the view of a

modern leader of thought in this field, see Jeremy Bentham,

Defence of Usury, Letter X.  For an admirable piece of research

into the nicer points involved in the whole subject, see H. C.

Lea, The Ecclesiatical Treatment of Usury, in the Yale Review for

February, 1894.





The dealings of theology with public economy were by no means

confined to the taking of interest for money.  It would be

interesting to note the restrictions placed upon commerce by the

Church prohibition of commercial intercourse with infidels,

against which the Republic of Venice fought a good fight; to

note how, by a most curious perversion of Scripture in the Greek

Church, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented from

raising and eating potatoes; how, in Scotland, at the beginning

of this century, the use of fanning mills for winnowing grain was

widely denounced as contrary to the text, "The wind bloweth where

it listeth," etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is "Prince of the

powers of the air," and therefore as sufficient cause for

excommunication from the Scotch Church.  Instructive it would be

also to note how the introduction of railways was declared by an

archbishop of the French Church to be an evidence of the divine

displeasure against country innkeepers who set meat before their

guests on fast days, and who were now punished by seeing

travellers carried by their doors; how railways and telegraphs

were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of Antichrist;

and how in Protestant England the curate of Rotherhithe, at the

breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and

property, declared it from his pulpit a just judgment upon the

presumptuous aspirations of mortal man.



The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men

to the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, on

account of the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken

of in the Old Testament.  Religious scruples on similar grounds

have also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as life

insurance.



Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate

a widespread tendency; in the application of scriptural

declarations to matters of social economy, which has not yet

ceased, though it is fast fading away.[459]



[459] For various interdicts laid upon commerce by the Church,

see Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipsic,

1886, vol. ii, passim.  For the injury done to commerce by

prohibition of intercourse with the infidel, see Lindsay, History

of Merchant Shipping, London, 1874, vol. ii.  For superstitions

regarding the introduction of the potato in Russia, and the name

"devil's root" given it, see Hellwald, Culturgeschichte, vol. ii,

p. 476; also Haxthausen, La Russie.  For opposition to winnowing

machines, see Burton, History of Scotland, vol. viii, p. 511;

also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause

Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii.  For the

case of a person debarred from the communion for "raising the

devil's wind" with a winnowing machine, see Works of Sir J. Y.

Simpson, vol. ii.  Those doubting the authority or motives of

Simpson may be reminded that he was to the day of his death one

of the strictest adherants to Scotch orthodoxy.  As to the curate

of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir I. Brunel for May 20, 1827, in

Life of I. K. Brunel, p. 30.  As to the conclusions drawn from

the numbering of Israel, see Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws

of Moses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3.  The author of this work himself

witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer

the questions of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse,

New York; and this reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned

in II Samuel xxiv, 1, and I Chronicles xxi,1, for the numbering

of the children of Israel.





Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the

modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the

poor,--the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be

helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of

indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most

beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm

atmosphere of medieval devotion into great systems for the

pauperizing of the labouring classes.  Here, too, scientific

modes of thought in social science have given a new and nobler

fruitage to the whole growth of Christian benevolence.[460]



[460] Among the vast number of authorities regarding the

evolution of better methods in dealing with pauperism, I would

call attention to a work which is especially suggestive--

Behrends, Christianity and Socialism, New York, 1886.