The wrong and the very nature of usury came to be forgotten with the great expansion of financial dealings which arose in the middle and end of the seventeenth century--that is, about 250 years ago--in Europe. In the simpler times, when commercial transactions were open and upon a comparatively small scale, and done between men who knew each other, you could pretty usually tell, as you can in private life, whether a loan were a loan required for a productive or an unproductive purpose. The burden of proof lay upon the lender. It was no excuse in lending a man money to say: “I did not know what he wanted to do with it, so I charged him 10 per cent., thinking that very probably he was going to use it productively.” The courts of justice would not admit such a plea, and they were quite right. For under the simple conditions of the old days the judge would answer: “It was your business to know. A man does not come borrowing money unless he is in either personal necessity or has some productive scheme for which he wants to use the money. If you thought it was a productive scheme you would certainly have asked him about it in order to share the profits, and the fact that you did not trouble to find out whether it were productive or no shows that you are indifferent to the wrong of usury, and willing to do that wrong under the pretence that it was not your business to inquire.” The attitude of the law on money-lending in the old days was very much what it is to-day with regard to certain poisonous chemicals which may be used well or ill. The seller of those chemicals has to ask what they are going to be used for, and is responsible if he fails to inquire. In the same way the old Christian law said a lender was bound to find out if his loan were intended for production or not. If the law had not done this, then usury would have been universal and would have eaten up the State, to the profit of the few people who lent out their money: as it is doing now. But as trade became more and more complicated and much larger and lost its personal character, as the banking system arose on a large scale and great companies with any number of shareholders, and as it became impossible to lay the weight of proof upon the lender--when, indeed, most lenders could not know for what their money was being lent, but only that they had put it into some financial institution with the object of fructifying it--then the opportunity for Usury came in, and it soon permeated all commerce.