benefits there really be, should not be extended to aU classes alike ; but if the system is in- jurious, then it should be abolished in toto. There is still another grave inconsistency in the Usury laws, namely : the fixing but one rate of in- terest for eyery kind of security. " As well might a clause be added, fixing and reducing the price of horses. It may be said against fixing the price of horse-flesh, that different horses may be of different values ; I answer, not more different than the values which the use of the same sum of money may be of to different persons on different occasions."^ Money ' Jeremy Bentham; Def. of Us., p. 82.
advanced on landed property may be considered as generally well secured, and the risk extremely small j whereas money lent for use in trade or business, upon contingent, personal, or terminable securities, is greatly more hazarded, and should pay accordingly/ Yet the law does not discriminate in these cases.
The degree of risk run by the lender must enter into the contract, as we have seen that it does in boi> tomry and respondentia bonds.
But the happiest results to the trading community, it is believed, would follow the removal of all restric- tions upon pecuniary bargains, not even excepting those relating to mortgages and other securities on land. It is true that land-owners, as a class, have always been opposed to the abolition of the usury laws, chiefly because, as they affirm, much of the money now lent on mortgages would, if these laws were abolished, be called in, should money become scarce and rates increase, to be employed at greater interest elsewhere,^ or the higher rate be demanded ' The matter is thus stated by Grotius,* " If the compensation allowed by law does not exceed the proportion of the hazard run, or the want felt, by the loan, its allowance is neither repugnant to the revealed nor the natural law ; but if it exceeds those bounds it is then oppressive usury ; and though the municipal laws may give it impunity, they can never make it just."