even since that date, although the commercial phrase "interest" has
been adopted in order to distinguish an open and unoppressive rate of
usury from a surreptitious and tyrannical one, has the debate of
lawfulness or unlawfulness ever turned seriously on that distinction. It
is neither justified by its defenders only in its mildness, nor
condemned by its accusers only in its severity. Usury in any degree is
asserted by the Doctors of the early Church to be sinful, just as theft
and adultery are asserted to be sinful, though neither may have been
accompanied with violence; and although the theft may have been on the
most splendid scale, and the fornication of the most courtly refinement.

So also, in modern days, though the voice of the Bank of England in
Parliament declares a loan without interest to be a monster,[128] and a
loan made below the current rate of interest, a monster in its degree,
the increase of dividends above that current rate is not, as far as I
am aware, shunned by shareholders with an equally religious horror.

158. But--this strange question being asked--I give its simple and broad
answer in the words of Christ: "The taking up that thou layedst not
down;"--or, in explained and literal terms, usury is any money paid, or
other advantage given, for the loan of anything which is restored to its
possessor uninjured and undiminished. For simplest instance, taking a
cabman the other day on a long drive, I lent him a shilling to get his
dinner. If I had kept thirteen pence out of his fare, the odd penny
would have been usury.

Or again. I lent one of my servants, a few years ago, eleven hundred
pounds, to build a house with, and stock its ground. After some years he
paid me the eleven hundred pounds back. If I had taken eleven hundred
pounds and a penny, the extra penny would have been usury.

I do not know whether by the phrase, presently after used by your
Lordship, "religious sanctions," I am to understand the Law of God which
David loved, and Christ fulfilled, or whether the splendor, the
commercial prosperity, and the familiar acquaintance with all the
secrets of science and treasures of art, which we admire in the City of
Manchester, must in your Lordship's view be considered as "cases" which
the intelligence of the Divine Lawgiver could not have originally
contemplated. Without attempting to disguise the narrowness of the
horizon grasped by the glance of the Lord from Sinai, nor the
inconvenience