[Footnote 1: The many devices which were resorted to in order to evade the prohibition of usury are explained in Dr. Cunningham's _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, vol. i. p. 255. See also Delisle, _L'Administration financière des Templiers_, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1889, vol. xxxiii. pt. ii., and Ashley, _Economic History_, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 426. The _Summa Pastoralis_ of Raymond de Pennafort analyses and demolishes many of the commoner devices which were employed to evade the usury laws. On the part played by the Jews, see Brants, _op. cit._, Appendix I.] [Footnote 2: _Die Nationalökonomischen Grundsätze der canonistischen Lehre_, p. 192.] [Footnote 3: _History of the German People_ (Eng. trans.), vol. ii. p. 99.] SECTION 3.--VALUE OF THE STUDY OF THE SUBJECT The question may be asked whether the study of a system of economic teaching, which, even if it ever did receive anything approaching universal assent, has long since ceased to do so, is not a waste of labour. We can answer that question in the negative, for two reasons. In the first place, as we said above, a proper understanding of the earlier periods of the development of a body of knowledge is indispensable for a full appreciation of the later. Even if the canonist system were not worth studying for its own sake, it would be deserving of attention on account of the light it throws on the development of later economic doctrine. 'However the canonist theory may contrast with or resemble modern economics, it is too important a part of the history of human thought to be disregarded,' says Sir William Ashley. 'As we cannot fully understand the work of Adam Smith without giving some attention to the physiocrats, nor the physiocrats without looking at the mercantilists: so the beginnings of mercantile theory are hardly intelligible without a knowledge of the canonist doctrine towards which that theory stands in the relation partly of a continuation, partly of a protest.'[1] [Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 381.]