was again brought into requisition, and
early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the Abbate Mastrofini issued
a work on usury, which, he declared on its title-page, demonstrated that
"moderate usury is not contrary to Holy Scripture, or natural law,
or the decisions of the Church." Nothing can be more comical than the
suppressions of truth, evasions of facts, jugglery with phrases,
and perversions of history, to which the abbate is forced to resort
throughout his book in order to prove that the Church has made no
mistake. In the face of scores of explicit deliverances and decrees of
fathers, doctors, popes, and councils against the taking of any interest
whatever for money, he coolly pretended that what they had declared
against was EXORBITANT interest. He made a merit of the action of the
Church, and showed that its course had been a blessing to humanity. But
his masterpiece is in dealing with the edicts of Clement V and Benedict
XIV. As to the first, it will be remembered that Clement, in accord
with the Council of Vienne, had declared that "any one who shall
pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money
is not a sin, we decree him to be a heiretic fit for punishment," and we
have seen that Benedict XIV did not at all deviate from the doctrines of
his predecessors. Yet Mastrofini is equal to his task, and brings out,
as the conclusion of his book, the statement put upon his title-page,
that what the Church condemns is only EXORBITANT interest.

This work was sanctioned by various high ecclesiastical dignitaries, and
served its purpose; for it covered the retreat of the Church.

In 1872 the Holy Office, answering a question solemnly put by the Bishop
of Ariano, as solemnly declared that those who take eight per cent
interest per annum are "not to be disquieted"; and in 1873 appeared a
book published under authority from the Holy See, allowing the faithful
to take moderate interest under condition that any future decisions
of the Pope should be implicitly obeyed. Social science as applied to
political economy had gained a victory final and complete. The Torlonia
family at Rome to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages,
affiliations, and papal favour--all won by lending money at interest,
and by liberal gifts, from the profits of usury, to the Holy See--is but
one out of many growths of its kind on ramparts long since surrendered
and deserted.(458)

(458) For the decree forbidd