XX. There are some kinds of interest, which are thought to wear the appearance of usury, and generally come under that denomination, but which in reality are contracts of a different nature. The five shillings commission which a banker, for instance, charges upon every hundred pounds, is not so much an interest in addition to five per cent, as a compensation for his trouble, and for the risk and inconvenience he incurs, by the loan of his money, which he might have employed in some other lucrative way. In the same manner a person who lends money to many individuals, and, for that purpose, keeps certain sums of cash in his hands, ought to have some indemnity for the continual loss of interest upon those sums, which may be considered as so much dead stock. Nor can any recompence of this kind be branded with the name of usury. Demosthenes, in his speech against Pantaenetus, condemns it as an odious act of injustice, to charge with usury a man, who in order to keep his principal undiminished, or to assist another with money, lends out the savings of his industry and frugal habits, upon a moderate interest. XXI. Those human laws, which allow a compensation to be made for the use of money or any other thing, are neither repugnant to natural nor revealed law. Thus in Holland, where the rate of interest upon common loans was eight per cent, there was no injustice in requiring twelve per cent of merchants; because the hazard was greater. The justice and reasonableness indeed of all these regulations must be measured by the hazard or inconvenience of lending. For where the recompence exceeds this, it becomes an act of extortion or oppression. XXII. Contracts for guarding against danger, which are called insurances, will be deemed fraudulent and void, if the insurer knows beforehand that the thing insured is already safe, or has reached its place of destination, and the other party that it is already destroyed or lost. And that not so much on account of the equality naturally requisite in all contracts of exchange, as because the danger and uncertainty is the very essence of such contract. Now the premium upon all insurances must be regulated by common estimation.[35] XXIII. In trading partnerships, where money is contributed by both parties; if the proportions be equal, the profits and the losses ought to be equal also. But if they be unequal, the profits and the losses must bear the same proportion, as Aristotle has shewn at the conclusion of the eighth book of his Ethics. And the same rule will hold good where equal or unequal proportions of labor are contributed. Labor may be given as a balance against money, or both labor and money may be given, according to the general maxim that one man's labour is an equivalent for another man's money.