Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/128

112 HISTORY OF GREECE. The Koran follows out this point of view consistently, and pro hibits the taking of interest altogether. In most other nations, laws have been made to limit the rate of interest, and at Rome, especially, the legal rate was successively lowered, though it seems, as might have been expected, that the restrictive ordi- nances were constantly eluded. All such restrictions have been intended for the protection of debtors ; an effect which large ex- perience proves them never to produce, unless it be called pro- tection to render the obtaining of money on loan impracticable for the most distressed borrowers. But there was another effect which they did tend to produce, they softened down the primi- tive antipathy against the practice generally, and confined the odious name of usury to loans lent above the fixed legal rate. In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their ten- dency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time not unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies arising out of the industrial progress of society, which gradually exhib- ited the relation of lender and borrower in a light more recip- rocally beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of the bystander. 1 At Athens, the more favorable point of view prevailed through- out all the historical times, the march of industry and com- merce, under the mitigated law which prevailed subsequently to Solon, had been sufficient to bring it about at a very early period, and to suppress all public antipathy against lenders at in- terest/ 2 We may remark, too, that this more equitable tone of opinion grew up 'spontaneously, Avithout any legal restriction on the Megarians on emancipating themselves from their oligarchy, as recounted above, chapter ix, p. 44. 1 In every law to limit the rate of interest, it is of course implied that the law not only ought to fix, but can fix, the maximum rate at which money ia to be lent. The tribunes at Home followed out this proposition with perfect consistency : they passed successive laws for the reduction of the rate of inter- est, until at length they made it illegal to take any interest at all : " Gemeci- urn, tribunum plebis, tulisse ad populum, ne fcencrari liceret." (Liv. vii, 42.) History shows that the law, though passed, was not carried into execution. 2 Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. i, ch. 22, p. 128) thinks differently. in my judgment, contrary to the evidence : the passages to which he refers, especially that of Theophrastus, are not sufficient to sustain hia opinion, and there are other passages which go far to contradict, it.