^Ex. o/Neshech.
to make profit of by letting them to hire. And though money was originally used for the purposes of exchange, yet the laws of any State may well be justified in permitting it to be turned to the pur- poses of profit, if the convenience of society (the great end for which money was invented) shall re- quire it." ^ And in a later work^ the fallacy of this famous doctrine, and the arguments based upon it, are ably exposed and refuted.
When Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, was called to give laws to the Athenians,^ he placed no restrictions upon trade in money, bui? allowed them to regulate the rate of interest by their own con- tracts.'' Athens, at that time, was in a state of absolute anarchy, and it was hoped by the majority, that he would effect a new division of lands, and estabUsh an equality of wealth, as Lycurgus had done at Sparta; but the influence of Solon, in Attica, fell far short of that which Lycurgus had acquired in Laconia, and he durst go no further than to declare all debtors discharged and acquitted of all their debts, whereby the poor citizens, whose excessive debts and accumulated arrears had forced them to sell their persons and liberty, and reduce themselves to a state ^Bl. Com. II, 454. '^ Beniham's Def. of Us., 101. 'Ante, J. C, 559. * Flut. in Solon, 87. " It is a glorious monument of the enlightened and commercial character of Greece, that she had no laws on the subject of usury ; that her trade in money, like the trade in everything else, was left wholly without legal restriction." — (Boe/c. Econ. of Athens.')