The law respecting loans was no less remarkable. It was forbidden those who lent by contract to allow the principal to more than double by the accumulation of the interest. Creditors who demanded pay could only seize the goods of the debtor. Bodily restraint was never allowed. For the legislator considered goods as belonging to those who acquired them by labor, by transmission, or by gift, but the individual belonged to the state, which, at any moment, might claim his services in war or in peace. It would, indeed, be absurd if a warrior, at the moment of battle, could be carried off by his creditor, and the safety of all endangered by the cupidity of one. It appears that Solon introduced this law at Athens, giving it the name of _seisactheia_,[29] and remitted all debts contracted under restraint. Most of the Greek legislators are blamed, and not without reason, for forbidding the seizure of arms, ploughs, and other necessary utensils, as pledges of debts, and for permitting, on the other hand, the privation of the liberty of those who made use of these instruments. It is evident that civilized nations, from the earliest times, sought to oppose and repress the dangerous evil of usury, which inevitably leads to the oppression of the laborer and the degradation of labor. But the Egyptians had an efficacious means of ensuring the payment of debts--in depriving those of sepulture who died without satisfying their creditors. In such a case the body, after being embalmed, was simply deposited in the house of the deceased and left to the children. “It sometimes happens,” says Diodorus, “that, owing to the prevailing respect for the memory of parents, the grandchildren, becoming wealthier, paid the debts of their ancestor, had the decree of condemnation revoked, and gave him a magnificent funeral.” The same author adds, “It is common to give the body of a deceased parent as the guarantee of a debt. The greatest infamy and privation of sepulture awaited those who did not redeem such a pledge.” “Under the reign of Asychis,” says Herodotus, “the Egyptians made a law allowing a person to borrow by giving in pledge the body of his father. An additional clause allowed the lender to dispose of the sepulchral chamber of the borrower, and, in case of refusal to pay the debt, he who had given such a pledge incurred the following punishment: in case of death, the impossibility of obtaining burial either in the paternal sepulchre or in any other, and the interdiction of burying any one belonging to him.” This singular custom of pledging a dead body could only exist in Egypt, where it was a religious obligation to preserve the body, and an infamy not to give funeral honors to deceased parents.