be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent
the right--on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based--
of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice
to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom
although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin
a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued
on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected
in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.

Usury Laws

While thus the great democrat had the imperishable honour of emancipating
personal freedom in principle from capital, he attempted moreover
to impose a police limit on the excessive power of capital by usury-laws.
He did not affect to disown the democratic antipathy to stipulations
for interest. For Italian money-dealing there was fixed a maximum amount
of the loans at interest to be allowed in the case of the individual
capitalist, which appears to have been proportioned to the Italian
landed estate belonging to each, and perhaps amounted to half its value.
Transgressions of this enactment were, after the fashion of the procedure
prescribed in the republican usury-laws, treated as criminal offence
and sent before a special jury-commission. If these regulations
were successfully carried into effect, every Italian man of business
would be compelled to become at the same time an Italian landholder,
and the class of capitalists subsisting merely on their interest
would disappear wholly from Italy. Indirectly too the no less injurious
category of insolvent landowners who practically managed their estates
merely for their creditors was by this means materially curtailed,
inasmuch as the creditors, if they desired to continue their lending
business, were compelled to buy for themselves. From this very fact
besides it is plain that Caesar wished by no means simply to renew
that naive prohibition of interest by the old popular party,
but on the contrary to allow the taking of interest within certain limits.
It is very probable however that he did not confine himself
to that injunction--which applied merely to Italy--of a maximum amount
of sums to be lent, but also, especially with respect to the provinces,
prescribed maximum rates for interest itself. The enactments--
that it was illegal to take higher interest than 1 per cent per month,
or to take interest on arrears of interest,