adjusted in the Justinian Code, by a compromise permitting six per
cent. and severely restraining the exorbitant rates.

Three hundred and twenty-three years B.C., Livy speaks of a creditor
who kept his debtor in irons, claiming, besides the debt, the interest
which he exacted with greatest severity. It was soon after decreed
that this cruelty should end and that no citizen should be placed in
irons or sold into slavery for debt.

At the close of the republic the rate was twenty-four per cent.

England: In the earliest periods of which we have any records we find
that the doctrine, that letting money to hire was sinful, prevailed
universally over the island of Great Britain. It was the prevailing
opinion that interest, or usury, as it was then called, was unjust
gain, forbidden by divine law, and which a good Christian could
neither receive nor pay. In common law the practice of taking increase
was classed among the lowest crimes against public morals. So odious
was it among Christians that the practice was confined almost wholly
to the Jews, who did not exact usury of Jews but of the Christians.

The laws of King Alfred, about 900 A.D., directed that the effects of
money-lenders upon usury should be forfeited to the king, their lands
to the lords under whom they were held, and they should not be buried
in consecrated ground.

By the laws of Edward the Confessor, about 1050 A.D., the usurer
forfeited all his property and was declared an outlaw and banished
from England. In the reign of Henry II, about the close of the
twelfth century, the estates of usurers were forfeited at their death
and their children were disinherited.

His successor, Richard I, was yet more severe, forbidding the usurers
attending his coronation, nor would he protect them from mob violence.

During the thirteenth century the severities against the usurers were
not relaxed. King John confiscated their gathered wealth without
scruple. It is recorded that he exacted an enormous fine of a Jew in
Bristol for his usuries, and when the Jew refused to pay he ordered
one of his teeth to be drawn daily until he should pay. The Jew is
said to have endured the pulling of seven, but then weakened and paid
the fine.

Henry III was equally harsh and severe in his measures. He exacted all
he could and then turned them over to the Earl of Cornwall. "The one
flayed and the other emboweled." It is written in the chronicles of
England, 1251 A.D., "By such