“The burden which the people underwent in the earning on of this work, and the incessant labor which they were enforced to undergo to bring it to so speedy a conclusion, being very great, ... care was taken to relieve them from a much greater burden, the oppression of usurers; which they then in great misery lay under, and had much greater reason to complain of. For the rich, taking advantage of the necessities of the meaner sort, had exacted heavy usury of them, making them pay the centesima for all moneys lent them; that is, 1 per cent. for every month, which amounted to 12 per cent. for the whole year; so that they were forced to mortgage their lands, and sell their children into servitude, to have wherewith to buy bread for the support of themselves and their families; which being a manifest breach of the law of God, given them by Moses (for that forbids all the race of Israel to take usury of any of their brethren), Nehemiah, on his hearing hereof, resolved forthwith to remove so great an iniquity; in order whereto he called a general assembly of all the people, where having set forth unto them the nature of the offence, how great a breach it was of the divine law, and how heavy an oppression upon their brethren, and how much it might provoke the wrath of God against them, he caused it to be enacted by the general suffrage of that whole assembly, that all should return to their brethren whatsoever had been exacted of them upon usury, and also _release all the lands, vineyards, olive-yards, and houses_, which had been taken of them upon _mortgage_ on the account hereof.” The measure of Nehemiah appears thus to have been not merely a seisachtheia such as that of Solon, but also a παλιντοκία, or refunding of interest paid by the debtor in past time,—analogous to the proceeding of the Megarians on emancipating themselves from their oligarchy, as recounted above, chapter ix, p. 44. In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their tendency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time not unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies arising out of the industrial progress of society, which gradually exhibited the relation of lender and borrower in a light more reciprocally beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of the bystander.[192] [192] In every law to limit the rate of interest, it is of course implied that the law not only ought to fix, but can fix, the maximum rate at which money is to be lent. The tribunes at Rome followed out this proposition with perfect consistency: they passed successive laws for the reduction of the rate of interest, until at length they made it illegal to take any interest at all: “Gemecium, tribunum plebis, tulisse ad populum, ne fœnerari liceret.” (Liv. vii, 42.) History shows that the law, though passed, was not carried into execution.