Usury : $b a scriptural, ethical and economic viewElliott, Calvin
Religion
Usury : $b a scriptural, ethical and economic view
Elliott, Calvin
Usury
He has a right to his own vital energy and to all that his own vital
force produces. He has a right to his property inherited, earned, or
however secured, except by fraud. He has no claim against the vital
energy of his fellow man, nor has he any claim whatever against the
property of another.
The working man needs capital. His vital energy must waste unless
there is material upon which it may be expended. There must be the
tree, land or material in some form, upon which he can work. But give
him the world raw and unsubdued and he can transform it again as he
has. He can build again everything on land and sea, the farms, towns,
and cities, and the floating palaces. He can again dig out the mines
and refine the silver and gold, mould the clay, smelt the ore and
shape the iron. His needs and his power, however, give him no claim to
the property of another.
The man of property is dependent upon the laborer. He may be the owner
of farms, forests and mines, of horses, flocks and herds, of railroads
and oil wells, yet these will not minister to him nor serve him
without the laborer. His coffers may be filled with gold, and his
barns bursting with grain and his stalls filled with fatlings, yet all
this wealth is useless and lost, unless touched with the vital energy
of an intelligent laborer. But his dependence and losses give him no
right to the labor of another.
He has no right, no just claim, to the services of another man, his
equal. All his wealth cannot confer the right. Wealth is but a thing,
in itself without rights, and can therefore add nothing to the rights
of its owner.
He may however use his wealth to command service by might, but not by
right. A club is but a thing having no will and no rights, yet in the
hands of a savage it adds greatly to his power and may be used by him
to oppress another of his tribe. A ruffian with his gun meeting a
defenseless man may so command him, that he is ready for the most
abject obedience. An armed highwayman may compel a brave man "to stand
and deliver." So a man may use his property to secure the service of
another but it gives him no right to that service.
The usurer, who has himself no rights against his fellows, uses a
thing, his property, as an instrument or weapon to command service.
He may place his hand upon every material thing another must have, and
withhold it, and the other is shut up and compelled, he has no
alternative. He must yield to the demands or suffer. Many men are
driven to the last extremity before they will borrow.
But if the borrower is very willing and urgent for the loan, this does
not change the nature of the act. The game may be shot upon the wing
as it is endeavoring to escape, or it may be snared in a trap by a
tempting bait. The wild broncho may be captured in chase, or beguiled
into the corral.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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