Menger expresses the same
opinion: 'There is not the least reason for attacking from the moral
and religious standpoints loans at interest and usury more than any
other form of unearned income. If one questions the legitimacy of
loans at interest, one must equally condemn as inadmissible the other
forms of profit from capital and lands, and particularly the feudal
institutions of the Middle Ages.... It would have been but a logical
consequence for the Church to have condemned all forms of unearned
revenue.'[3]

[Footnote 1: Ashley, _op. cit._, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 427.]

[Footnote 2: _Der Kapitalismus fin de siecle_, p. 29.]

[Footnote 3: _Das Recht auf den Arbeiterstrag_. See the Abbe Hohoff in
_Democratie Chretienne_, Sept. 1898, p. 284.]

No such conclusion, however, can be properly drawn from the mediaeval
teaching. The whole discussion on usury turned on the distinction
which was drawn between things of which the use could be transferred
without the ownership, and things of which the use could not be so
transferred. In the former category were placed all things which
could be used, either by way of enjoyment or employment for productive
purposes, without being destroyed in the process; and in the latter
all things of which the use or employment involved the destruction.

With regard to income derived from the former, no difficulty was ever
felt; a farm or a house might be let at a rent without any question,
the return received being universally regarded as one of the
legitimate fruits of the ownership of the thing. With regard to the
latter, however, a difficulty did arise, because it was felt that a
so-called loan of such goods was, when analysed, in reality a sale,
and that therefore any increase which the goods produced was in
reality the property, not of the lender, but of the borrower. That
money was in all cases sterile was never suggested; on the contrary,
it was admitted that it might produce a profit if wisely and prudently
employed in industry or commerce; but it was felt that such an
increase, when it took place, was the rightful property of the owner
of the money. But when money was lent, the owner of this money was
the borrower, and therefore, when money which was lent was employed
in such a way as to produce a profit, that profit belonged to the
borrower, not the lender. In this way the schoolmen were strictly
logical; they fully admitted that wealth could produce wealth; but
they insisted that th