sfer
of different objects; but interest, by transferring merely the same
object from one hand to another generates money from money, and the
product thus generated is called offspring (toxos) as being precisely
the same nature as that from which it proceeds."

Rome: In the early ages of Rome there were no laws regulating the
loans of money. The practice was common and was one of the most
frequent subjects of popular complaint. In the celebrated secession of
the lower classes of the people to Mons Sacer, when civil strife and
fraternal bloodshed was threatened, the loudest outcry was against the
oppression of exhorbitant interest exacted by wealthy citizens of
those who were obliged to borrow. The common rate was twelve per cent.
per annum. This is inferred from the fact that six per cent. was
called half interest and three per cent. one-fourth interest.

The early records of Rome prove conclusively the odium attached to the
business of money-lending for profit. In the codification of laws in
the fifth century B.C. the rate of usury was fixed at one per cent.
per month. This limitation of usury was enacted after a long and
bitter contest between the rich lenders and the poorer classes.

A compromise seems to have been made in the assigned punishments. The
laws for the collection of debts and the punishment of exacting more
than the law permitted were alike extremely cruel.

The creditors of an insolvent debtor were given the power of cutting
his body in pieces and the power of selling his children into slavery.
The penalty of taking more than this legal interest was punished with
more severity than theft. The thief must restore double, but the
usurer must restore fourfold. This we learn from Cato's treatise on
"Agriculture." Cato's own opinion of usury is shown in the answer
which he made when he was asked what he thought of usury, his reply
was, "What do you think of murder?"

Nearly a hundred years later the Licinian law forbade all increase. A
little later we find the one-half of one per cent. permitted by law.
Then under Sylla the legal rate is made three per cent. In the time of
Antony and Cleopatra it is four per cent. For a time there was utter
confusion and intolerably oppressive rates prevailed. Horace, in his
Satires, speaks of one lending at sixty per cent. In the reign of
Tiberius Caesar, Rome was again shaken with another usury sedition, an
uprising of the people against the usurers. The law was finally