“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion whatever of the employment of money for the common benefit of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, in Matthew xxv., verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not advertise, and I have not the second sight. “My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods. “I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, an average, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages. “Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.