An insurance company undertakes to protect a property for a term of years, to a distant date. A rate is given for protection from a single element, as fire. If all destructive agents are included the rate is higher. The rate is higher for a long than a short period. All the business world recognize the value of this service and nearly every kind of property may now be insured. The premium is cheerfully paid by the owner of the property for the service rendered him. It is a real and valuable service to have his property protected, preserved, or restored, so that it cannot be lost before the distant date. It is conceivable that a property might be so indestructible that the risk would be practically nothing and a policy might be issued without a premium, but that a price should be paid for the privilege of protecting any property is utterly inconsistent with rational insurance.
Now usury presumes to reverse this ethical order and requires that the insurance company shall pay the owner of the property for the privilege of protecting it. Under usury the property given into the care of another, and called a loan, must be perfectly protected and preserved by the borrower, restored if lost, and returned in full to the owner at the agreed distant date, and a price paid for the privilege of performing the service.
The true ethical principle and equity in the relations between the owner of a property and the one who holds, protects and preserves it, require that the owner shall render to the holder a just compensation. This will vary in different conditions, it may be very small, it may in rare cases be entirely eliminated; but they also utterly forbid that the party rendering the service shall pay for the privilege of serving.
One may submit to an injustice in order to gain an advantage. He can do better for himself by submitting than by resisting. His employer may be hard and oppressive but this is the best job he can get and he holds on, but that does not justify the oppressions of the employer up to the breaking point. It may be to the advantage of a borrower to submit to