concurrent condemnation of usury by nearly every nation in Christendom is mainly owing to the general and violent denunciation, by the fathers and clergy of the ancient churches,^ who in those ages of darkness and superstition, held almost absolute influence over the opinions of the mass. They had monopolized all the learning of the times within their own body, and it was natural that general submission should be paid by the ignorant to the opinions propagated by the learned ; especially as such teachings were instilled into the minds of the youth, and grew with them, so it followed that this clerical influence found its way into the Senate Chamber, and stamped the proceedings there with the bigotry of the period. An exception, however, to this general rule must be made in favor of Greece, which had no laws on the subject, as we shall presently see ; but in less enlightened countries the rule is literally true. But the every-day necessities of men always required facilities to borrow, and the acquisitive elements of human nature would not ' It was ranked with heresy, schism, incest, and adultery — sentence of excommunication was to be denounced by a Bishop, or Prebendary at least; Canmie.s si/nodi — (London, A.D., 1584, o. 4.)
" Yea, with the Thunderbolt of excommunication, to terrify such as do wilfully defend usurie." — (^Rogers on Usury, A.D., 1578.)
afford these without reward. To this the Clergy were always opposed ; and thus both in the ancient and more modern laws on the subject, we find the prejudices contending with the necessities of the times, producing results strangely inconsistent. In some of these laws we may see, that to satisfy the former, usury is declared a detestable sin, contra jus humanum et divinum, and to meet the latter, sanc- tions the thing itself under certain restrictions. An argument formerly much urged by the reverend Fathers, and indeed by all the writers against usury, was that it was unlawful in point of conscience, be- cause contrary to natural law —