in these words : " It being found that the Act of Edward had not done so much good as was ' " Thus the forbidding of usurie, is the very maintaining of damned usurie; therefore, that which is lawful, in my conceit should be approved, and the restriction and stints clearly sette down and nominated." — {Ex. of Nashec. Hume's Hist, of Eng., 4 vol., p. 354.) '13 Elizaheth, c. 8. A. D. 1571.
hoped for, but rather that the vice of usury had much more exceedingly abounded/ and the Statute of Henry VIII. being one by which the vice of usury was well suppressed," therefore the said Statute of Henry was revived in part, and the legal rate of interest fixed at ten per cent.^ The statute then declared, with sin- gular inconsistency, that " all usury being forbidden by the law of God, is sin and detestable," and again repealed the common law jurisdiction, so far as it was a temporal law, but expressly exempted from its operation, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to punish of- fenders as heretofore.^ Here, following in the footsteps of Dr. Wilson, came a host of pious and learned divines, who emu- lated each other in their efforts to stem the tide of demoralization, which this enactment was likely to produce, and declare usury beyond the pale of aU law, human and divine. Notwithstanding this vio- lent opposition, however, money soon became abund- ant, as commerce increased, and ten per cent, began to be considered as too high a rate ; and Hume" men- tions, as an indication, that France had advanced ' " Thus the forbidding of all usury, is the very maintaining of damned usury." — {Bolton on Us.)
' The statute was not allowed to pass without a violent opposition ; it encountered all the concentrated virulence which the igno- rance and superstition of its opponents could bring to bear on the question. Dr. Thomas Wilson, the author of a " Discourse on Usurie," before referred to, was one of the principal speakers.— {Vid. Pari. Del., A. D. 1571, vol. 4, p. 188.)