His indignant answer was, by a retorted question--_Quid hominem occidere?_--what do I think of murder? In this particular case, as in some others, we must allow that our worthy ancestors and forerunners upon this terraqueous planet were enormous blockheads. And their 'exquisite reason' for this opinion on usury, was quite worthy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek:--'money,' they argued, 'could not breed money: one guinea was neither father nor mother to another guinea: and where could be the justice of making a man pay for the use of a thing which that thing could never produce?' But, venerable blockheads, that argument applies to the case of him who locks up his borrowed guinea. Suppose him _not_ to lock it up, but to buy a hen, and the hen to lay a dozen eggs; one of those eggs will be so much per cent.; and the thing borrowed has then produced its own _foenus_. A still greater inconsistency was this: Our ancestors would have rejoined--that many people did not borrow in order to produce, _i. e._ to use the money as capital, but in order to spend, _i. e._ to use it as income. In that case, at least, the borrowers must derive the _foenus_ from some other fund than the thing borrowed: for, by the supposition, the thing borrowed has been spent. True; but on the same principle these ancestors ought to have forbidden every man to sell any article whatsoever to him who paid for it out of other funds than those produced by the article sold. Mere logical consistency required this: it happens, indeed, to be impossible: but that only argues their entire non-comprehension of their own doctrines.