only on pledges, amply suflBcient to secure him, and easily converted into money at the end of the year — the time generally • limited for their redemption. While there is no clause in the law restraining him from receiving in pledge the garment from a man's back, that may be necessary to preserve his health, and keep him from becoming a charge upon the community in a public hospital ; nor is there anything in the law which prevents the mechanic from pawning his tools — the very instruments by which he is to live and sustain his family — to raise money at twenty-five per cent. It is vain to say that the excess above the six, or seven, or even ten per cent, which the pawn-broker's money may be worth, is the expense of storage, care, and labor, (the risk of loss by fire is expressly ex- empted by the law, and assumed by the unfortunate borrower, in addition to the exorbitant usury which he pays), and it must, therefore, be confessed that the law has dealt most liberally with a trade of far more than questionable public utility.
' In some states the rate of interest allowed to pawn-brokers is as higt as twenty-five per cent, per annum. In Pennsylvania it is seventy-two per cent, per annum.
INCONSISTENCIES OP THE LAW. 131 It is true that in some states pawn-brokers are limited to charge this rate only upon loans under twenty-five dollars ; yet the spirit of this restriction is easily and daily evaded with perfect impunity : as where a man wants to borrow one hundred dollars on his watch, the pawn-broker will not lend that sum on the watch, because on that sum on one pledge he can charge but seven per cent, j but he will lend twenty-five dollars on the watch and twenty-five dollars on each for the ring, key, and seal attached, and thus make up the sum required, in the shape of four distinct pledges. But again, the want of twentyfive dollars is not more keenly felt by one needy man than the want of twenty-five hundred dollars by another, for the importance of the sum is determined by the relative circumstances of the parties; and there seems, therefore, no reason why the benefits of the system, if