For it cannot be expected that the mass of mankind should find leisure, even had they the ability, to examine into the grounds of a hundredth part of the rules and maxims which they find themselves compelled to follow and observe. The fact is, that wherever it has been attempted to limit the rate of Interest, or to abolish it altogether by law, there the practice of Usury has uniformly revived. And, as might naturally be expected, the more severe the penalties, and the more rigid their execution, the higher the rate of interest was sure to rise. Because the risk being so much greater, the lender must needs have a larger premium of insurance to tempt him to incur it. It is a matter of history, that at Rome, during the continuance of the republican form of government the rates of interest were enormous. The simple and plain reason of this was, that the debtors who were always plebeians, were continually threatening their patrician creditors. So also, in those Christian countries where Interest on loans has been forbidden, or what is equivalent, where it has been placed by law at so low a point as would not suffice to pay the risk of loss to a lender, the practice has been made over almost entirely to the Jews; while at the same time so great has been the extortion, oppression, and humiliation to which this people were exposed that nothing short of a very heavy rate of Interest could indemnify them for such risks and repeated losses. Thus in any case the ratio of the Premium of insurance, which frequently forms the greater portion of what is called Interest, will depend upon the degree of security presented to the lender. The greater the risk, the higher will be the rate of Interest. When we detach from the rate of interest all that is paid as a security to the lender against the risk of partial or total loss of his capital, it remains to consider that part which is purely and simply Interest: that is to say, rent paid for the use of capital. This is the point upon which many wise legislators have endeavored to lay down laws as infallible guides, and many learned economists have advocated such restrictive enactments, as even to this day obtain in most civilized countries. The Romans seem, according to _Cato_, to have considered an Usurer, as worse than a thief. For, says he, “Our Ancestors, enacted in their laws, that a _thief_ should be condemned to pay _double_, but an _Usurer_, _quadruple_.” Even that most learned commentator on law, Sir Henry Blackstone, pronounces that a legal limit ought to be placed to this branch of trade. I will quote from Blackstone, on this subject. He says, when speaking of the general points in the contract of hiring and borrowing: [2 Com., p. 454,] “There is one species of this price or reward, the most usual of any, but concerning which many good and learned men have in former times very much perplexed themselves, and other people, by raising doubts about its legality _in foro conscientie_.