Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/123

DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRINCIPAL AND INTEREST. ]Q7 A-thens, and the evidentiary mortgage pillars remaining ever after undisturbed. In the sentiment of an early society, as in the old Roman law, a distinction is commonly made between the principal and the interest of a loan, though the creditors have sought to blend them indissolubly together. If the borrower cannot fulfil his promise to repay the principal, the public will regard him as having committed a wrong which he must make good by his person; but there is not the same unanimity as to his promise to pay interest: on the contrary, the very exaction of interest will be regarded by many in the same light in which the English law considers usurious interest, as tainting the whole transaction. But in the modern mind, principal, and interest within a limited rate, have so grown together, that we hardly understand how it can ever have been pronounced unworthy of an honorable citizen to lend money on interest ; yet such is the declared opinion of Aristotle, and other superior men of antiquity ; while the Roman Cato, the censor, went so far as to denounce the practice as a heinous crime. 1 It was comprehended by them among the worst of the tricks of trade, and they held that all trade, or profit derived from interchange, was unnatural, as being made by one man at the expense of another : such pursuits, therefore, could not be commended, though they might be tolerated to a certain extent as matter of necessity, but they belonged essen- tially to an inferior order of citizens. 2 What is remarkable in 1 Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 23 ; Cato ap. Cicero, de Ofiic. ii, 25. Plato, in his Treatise de Lcgg. (v, p. 742) forbids all lending on interest : indeed, he for- bids any private citizen to possess either gold or silver. To illustrate the marked difference made in the early Roman law, between the claim for the principal and that for the interest, I insert in an Appendix, at the end of this chapter, the explanation given by M. von Savigny, of the treatment of the nexi and addicti, connected as it is by analogy with the Solonian seisachthcia. 2 Aristot. Polit, i, 4, 23. 1% Je /tsTajATj-iKtje if> eyopevTjs fiinaiuf (oti yap narti. $vaiv, uMS u/r' u/^Xuv KOTIV), eiiAoywrara piaci'di TJ 6/3oXoTT3- TIKTJ, etc. Compare Ethic. Xikom. iv, 1. Plutarch borrows from Aristotle the quibble derived from the word TOKOS he Greek expression for interest), which has given birth to the well-knowr. i.ictum of Aristotle, that money being naturally barren, to extract oft'spriiif from it must necessarily be contrary to nature (see Plutarch, De Vit. yEr. AI D. 829).