isk, time and abstinence.

1. There is some risk in every investment. There is a possibility that
the most honest, industrious and careful debtor may by some
misfortune not be able to return the loan and it would therefore be
lost. To guard against this the usurer requires the rate of interest
to be graded by the measure of risk.

This is claimed to be of the nature of insurance, the borrower paying
the premium. The profits of insurance are secured by collecting a
larger premium than necessary to pay all losses. On this theory, the
gain of usury is in the excess that can be secured of increase over
the amounts lost.

This is the reverse of insurance. Insurance is the payment by an owner
of property to a company who guarantees its preservation. Usury is the
payment by the company to the owner for the privilege of guaranteeing
that he shall not suffer loss.

Business involves a risk usually covered by insurance, but no honest
man expects to make a profit out of his insurance.

2. A loan is made for a more or less extended time. Time is therefore
claimed to be a ground for usury charges.

This claim rests on the assumption that time will increase wealth. But
time is the great destroyer; time does not make gardens and farms, but
covers them with weeds and sends them back to a wilderness; time does
not erect a house, but pulls it down; time does not build a city, but
causes it to crumble and a few ages buries it under the dust; time
does not "incubate eggs, but turns them putrid; it does not transform
into fowls. If eggs are developed into chickens the difference between
eggs and chickens is the reward of the incubator."

Aside from the spirit of benevolence and sympathy with the needy there
are three selfish reasons why a time loan may be made. First, the
owner has no present need of it and wishes to be rid of its care.
Second, the owner shall need it at a distant date and he wishes it
preserved intact against that time. But these afford no ground for a
charge of increase. He who stands and resists the ravages of time
until the day it is needed does a positive service and deserves a
reward. Third, the lender wishes to appropriate the earnings of
another during the period of time given. This is the usurer's reason,
and were it not for this time would lose its importance as an element;
it is certain that long time loans would not be so attractive.

3. "The reward of abstinence" is a reward for refraining from
consum