INTOLERANCE AGAINST ITSURT.
In tracing the history of Usury, we cannot fail to observe how inconsistent and intolerant have been the popular manifestations of feeling, in almost every age and every civilized country, towards usury and usurers; nor without an enduring interest peruse the many severe and "penall lawes" upon the subject, which this prevailing spirit had called into existence and spread upon the statute books, for they furnish the text to a singular commentary upon the opinions that obtained at the several periods of their enactment. Thus we see in some the practice of usury marked by a spirit of intemperate dislike, and recited as one of the "foulest offences against God and man," and prescribing a punishment of rigorous severity (11)
accordingly; while in others it is urged that usury is a "concessuin propter duritiem cordis" and must be permitted freely. We shall see, however, that this great change of opinion was gradual and progressive, and excellently serves to show how slowly our fore- fathers became converts to the "doctrine of loans upon interest."
Many of the writers on the subject record the pre- judices of their times in the most violent language, and take pains to tell us that those who practised usury were very justly pointed at and abhorred, be- cause connected with the devil, their persons shunned, their vicinity detested, and their residences called the devil's vineyard. Some writers have even gone so far as to place usury in the same table with the crime of murder. Cicero says, that when Cato was ques- tioned on the subject, his only reply was, "what is murder?" Cum ille, qui qucesierat dixisset quid fcenerari ? turn Cato, quid hominem [inquit) occidere ? * And Dr.