[Footnote 193-4: How many merchants would have avoided bankruptcy here if they had been allowed to borrow at 8 per cent.! The established rate of 5 per cent. was certainly too low, considering the great demand for capital and the want of confidence at the moment, to permit capital to be loaned at that rate. Many saw themselves compelled to sell their merchandise or evidences of state indebtedness at a loss of 30 per cent., in order to meet their obligations. But the person who, to anticipate the receipts due in 6 months, for instance, consents to suffer a loss of 30 per cent., pays, in a certain sense, interest at the rate of 60 per cent. a year. Compare _Tooke_, Considerations on the State of the Currency, 60, and History of Prices, II, 163, on the Crisis of 1825-26. Since the Bank, least of all, could exceed the legal rate of interest, numberless applications were made to it in times of war in order to obtain the difference between the legal rate and the rate usual in the country. (_Thornton_, Paper Credit of Great Britain, ch. 10.) Prussia, November 27, 1857, suspended the usury laws for 3 months, on account of the commercial crisis, except the provisions relating to pawn-broker and minors.] [Footnote 193-5: _Turgot_ tells of Parisian "usurers" who made weekly advances to the market women of la Halle, and received for 3 livres, 2 sous interest; that is 173 per cent. a year. The premium for insurance may have been very high here. When such loaners were brought before the courts, and they were sentenced to the galleys, the usual punishment for usury, their debtors came and testified their gratitude by begging for mercy to them! (Mémoire sur le Prêt d'Argent, § 14, 31.) Compare _Cantillon_, Nature du Commerce, 276.] [Footnote 193-6: Thus, _Adam Smith_, Wealth of Nations, II, ch. 4. Similarly, _Roesler_ Grundsätze, 495 ff. Compare, _per contra_, _Jer. Bentham_, Defense of Usury: showing the Impolicy of the present legal Restraints on the Terms of pecuniary Bargains in Letters to a Friend. To which is added a Letter to Adam Smith on the Discouragement imposed by the above Restraints to the Progress of inventive Industry, 1787; 3 ed., 1816.] [Footnote 193-7: The first steamboat in the United States was, for a long time, called the "Fulton-folly!"] [Footnote 193-8: It is just as hard to see why only money-capital should have a fixed rate of interest, and not buildings, etc. likewise.]