r cent in England,
and ten per cent a month in Italy and Spain. Commerce, manufactures, and
general enterprise were dwarfed, while pauperism flourished.

Yet worse than these were the moral results. Doing what one holds to be
evil is only second in bad consequences to doing what is really evil;
hence, all lending and borrowing, even for the most legitimate purposes
and at the most reasonable rates, tended to debase both borrower and
lender. The prohibition of lending at interest in continental Europe
promoted luxury and discouraged economy; the rich, who were not
engaged in business, finding no easy way of employing their incomes
productively, spent them largely in ostentation and riotous living. One
evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews,
so acute in intellect and strong in will, were virtually drawn or driven
out of all other industries or professions by the theory that their
race, being accursed, was only fitted for the abhorred profession of
money-lending.(451)

(451) For evil economic results, and especially for the rise of the rate
of interest in England and elsewhere at times to forty per cent, see
Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Cambridge, 1890,
p. 189; and for its rising to ten per cent a month, see Bedarride, Les
Juifs en France, en Italie, at en Espagne, p. 220; see also Hallam's
Middle Ages, London, 1853, pp. 401, 402. For the evil moral effects of
the Church doctrine against taking interest, see Montesquieu, Esprit
des Lois, lib. xxi, chap. xx; see also Sismondi, cited in Lecky. For
the trifling with conscience, distinction between "consumptibles" and
"fungibles," "possessio" and "dominium," etc., see Ashley, English
Economic History, New York, pp. 152, 153; see also Leopold Delisle,
Etudes, pp. 198, 468. For the effects of these doctrines on the Jews,
see Milman, History of the Jews, vol. iii, p. 179; also Wellhausen,
History of Israel, London, 1885, p. 546; also Beugnot, Les Juifs
d'Occident, Paris, 1824, pt. 2, p. 114 (on driving Jews out of other
industries than money-lending). For a noted mediaeval evasion of the
Church rules against usury, see Peruzzi, Storia del Commercio e dei
Banchieri di Firenze, Florence, 1868, pp. 172, 173.

These evils were so manifest, when trade began to revive throughout
Europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest exertions were put
forth to induce the Church to change its position.

The first important e