money. They never thought
of denying that money, when properly used, was capable of bringing its
employer a profit; but they emphatically asserted that the profit was
due to the labour, and not to the money.

Antoninus of Florence clearly realised this: 'Money is not profitable
of itself alone, nor can it multiply itself, but it may become
profitable through its employment by merchants';[1] and Bernardine of
Sienna says: 'Money has not simply the character of money, but it
has beyond this a productive character, which we commonly call
capital.'[2] 'What is money,' says Brants, 'if it is not a means of
exchange, of which the employment and preservation will give a profit,
if he who possesses it is prudent, active, and intelligent? If this
money is well employed, it will become a capital, and one may derive
a profit from it; but this profit arises from the activity of him who
uses it, and consequently this profit belongs to him--it is the fruit,
the remuneration of his labour.... Did they (the scholastics) say
that it was impossible to draw a profit from a sum of money? No; they
admitted fully that one might _de pecunia lucrari_; but this _lucrum_
does not come from the _pecunia_, but from the application of labour
to the sum.'[3]

[Footnote 1: Quoted in Brants, _op. cit._, p. 134.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 3: Brants, _op. cit._, pp. 133-5; Nider, _De Cont. Merc._
iii. 15.]

Therefore, if the borrower did not derive any profit from the loan,
the sum lent had in fact been sterile, and obviously the just price of
the loan was the return of the amount lent; if, on the contrary, the
borrower had made a profit from it, it was the reward of his labour,
and not the fruit of the loan itself. To repay more than the sum lent
would therefore be to make a payment to one person for the labour of
another.[1] The exaction of usury was therefore the exploitation of
another man's exertion.[2]

[Footnote 1: Gerson, _De Cont._, iv. 15.]

[Footnote 2: Neumann, when he says that 'it was sinful to recompense
the use of capital belonging to another' (_Geschichte des Wuchers in
Deutschland_, p. 25), seems to miss the whole point of the discussion.
The teaching of the canonists on rents and partnership shows clearly
that the owner of capital might draw a profit from another's labour,
and the central point of the usury teaching was that money which has
been lent, and employed so as to produce a profit by the borrower,
belongs no