usury is in the excess that can be secured of increase over the amounts lost.
This is the reverse of insurance. Insurance is the payment by an owner of property to a company who guarantees its preservation. Usury is the payment by the company to the owner for the privilege of guaranteeing that he shall not suffer loss.
Business involves a risk usually covered by insurance, but no honest man expects to make a profit out of his insurance.
- A loan is made for a more or less extended time. Time is therefore claimed to be a ground for usury charges.
This claim rests on the assumption that time will increase wealth. But time is the great destroyer; time does not make gardens and farms, but covers them with weeds and sends them back to a wilderness; time does not erect a house, but pulls it down; time does not build a city, but causes it to crumble and a few ages buries it under the dust; time does not "incubate eggs, but turns them putrid; it does not transform into fowls. If eggs are developed into chickens the difference between eggs and chickens is the reward of the incubator."
Aside from the spirit of benevolence and sympathy with the needy there are three selfish reasons why a time loan may be made. First, the owner has no present need of it and wishes to be rid of its care. Second, the owner shall need it at a distant date and he wishes it preserved intact against that time. But these afford no ground for a charge of increase. He who stands and resists the ravages of time until the day it is needed does a positive service and deserves a reward. Third, the lender wishes to appropriate the earnings of another during the period of time given. This is the usurer's reason, and were it not for this time would lose its importance as an element; it is certain that long time loans would not be so attractive.