a man in these parts gets
or keeps out of debt himself, he is mostly engaged in encouraging
others to get into it. Often he has little or nothing himself, but
acts after the Irish fashion as deputy _gombeen_ man for the pleasure
of the thing, and also for a commission well and duly paid. This
determination towards borrowing and lending is not confined to any
particular class, but is characteristic of all. As the peer, who would
never have put his hand into his own pocket to pay for improving his
property, suddenly awakes to the value of drainage when the Government
offers a million and a half at one per cent., so did the _gombeen_
man, who would never have dreamed of lending more than a pound at a
time to a peasant, extend his credit four or five fold when the Land
Act of 1870 gave him the first instalment of proprietary right in the
land he occupied. The instalment was a very small one, but it was at
once discounted by the _gombeen_ man, whose rate of interest enabled
him to run extraordinary risks. As the poor pay dearly for everything,
so do they pay an extravagant interest for money. There was once a
fashionable West-end usurer, who, pretending to know nothing about
arithmetic, met his clients on the subject of percentage with "I don't
understand figures, but my terms are a shilling per pound every month.
It is easy to reckon up without going into sums on slates." This poor
innocent was charging just 60 per cent., but his terms were lavishly
liberal as compared with those of the _gombeen_ man. Instead of a
shilling per month the latter charges a shilling a week for every
sovereign advanced, and then "Begorra, it's only the name of a
sovereign," which being interpreted signifies that an advance of one
pound, less charges, only amounts to 18s. 10d., and that upon this sum
a shilling interest must be well and duly paid weekly. Any failure
entails a fine, and a failure to pay off the original sovereign
borrowed within six months is very heavily fined indeed. I am told
that the _gombeen_ man actually puts on cent. per cent. for this
failure of redemption; but, on my principle of believing only a
percentage of all I hear, and of taking a liberal discount off all I
see, I doubt this enormity. Concerning the shilling interest per week
on a pound there is, however, unhappily no room for doubt, and for
small unsecured loans 260 per cent. per annum is still the ruling
figure.

This enormous rate of interest, however, is now