[Footnote 128: Speech of Mr. J. C. Hubbard, M.P. for London, reported in
_Standard_ of 26th July, 1879.]

[Footnote 129: See the Articles of Association of the East Surrey Hall,
Museum, and Library Company. (_Fors Clavigera_, Letter lxx.)]

[Footnote 130: "The Polar World," p. 342, Longmans, 1874.]

[Footnote 131:

"The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,
The best conditioned and unwearied spirit,
In doing courtesies; and one in whom
_The ancient Roman honor more appears,
Than any that draws breath in Italy._"

This is the Shakespearian description of that Anthony, whom the modern
British public, with its new critical lights, calls a "sentimentalist
and speculator!"--holding Shylock to be the real hero, and innocent
victim of the drama.]

USURY.[132]

A PREFACE.

176. In the wise, practical, and affectionate sermon, given from St.
Mary's pulpit last autumn to the youth of Oxford, by the good Bishop of
Carlisle, his Lordship took occasion to warn his eagerly attentive
audience, with deep earnestness, against the crime of debt; dwelling
with powerful invective on the cruelty and selfishness with which, too
often, the son wasted in his follies the fruits of his father's labor,
or the means of his family's subsistence; and involved himself in
embarrassments which, said the Bishop, "I have again and again known to
cause the misery of all subsequent life."

The sin was charged, the appeal pressed, only on the preacher's
undergraduate hearers. Beneath the gallery, the Heads of Houses sate,
remorseless; nor from the pulpit was a single hint permitted that any
measures could be rationally taken for the protection, no less than the
warning, of the youth under their care. No such suggestion would have
been received, if even understood, by any English congregation of this
time;--a strange and perilous time, in which the greatest commercial
people of the world have been brought to think Usury the most honorable
and fruitful branch, or rather perennial stem, of commercial industry.

177. But whose the fault that English congregations are in this temper,
and this ignorance? The saying of mine,[133] which the author of this
book quotes in the close of his introduction, was written by me with a
meaning altogether opposite, and far more forcible, than that which it
might seem to bear to a careless interpreter.[134] In the present state
of popular revolt against all conception and manner of authority,