have been disposed to regret their own ignorance of the practice of money-lending.[190] How much the interest of money was then regarded as an undue profit extorted from distress, is powerfully illustrated by the old Jewish law; the Jew being permitted to take interest from foreigners (whom the lawgiver did not think himself obliged to protect), but not from his own countrymen.[191] The Koran follows out this point of view consistently, and prohibits the taking of interest altogether. In most other nations, laws have been made to limit the rate of interest, and at Rome, especially, the legal rate was successively lowered,—though it seems, as might have been expected, that the restrictive ordinances were constantly eluded. All such restrictions have been intended for the protection of debtors; an effect which large experience proves them never to produce, unless it be called protection to render the obtaining of money on loan impracticable for the most distressed borrowers. But there was another effect which they _did_ tend to produce,—they softened down the primitive antipathy against the practice generally, and confined the odious name of usury to loans lent above the fixed legal rate. [187] Tacit. Germ. 26. “Fœnus agitare et in usuras extendere, ignotum: ideoque magis servatur quam si vetitum esset,” (c. 21.) “Gaudent muneribus: sed nec data imputant, nec acceptis obligantur.” [188] Hesiod, Opp. Di. 647, 404. Βούληαι χρέα τε προφυγεῖν, καὶ λιμὸν ἀτερπῆ. Some good observations on this subject are to be found in the excellent treatise of M. Turgot, written in 1763, “Mémoire sur les Prêts d’Argent:”—