NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 335 



ous folio was published in Venice upon the same subject and 

 with the same title, by Onorato Leotardo. So far from showing 

 any signs of yielding, he is even more extreme than Vilagut had 

 been, and quotes with approval the old declaration that lenders 

 of money at interest are not only robbers but murderers. 



So far as we can learn, no real opposition was made in either 

 century to this theory, as a theory ; as to 'practice, it was different. 

 The Italian bankers and traders did not answer the theological 

 argument ; they simply overrode it. Nowhere was commerce car- 

 ried on in more complete defiance of this and other theological 

 theories hampering trade than in the very city where these great 

 treatises were published. The sin of usury, like the sin of com- 

 merce with the Mohammedans, seems to have been settled for by 

 the Venetian merchants on their death-beds, and greatly to the 

 advantage of the magnificent churches and ecclesiastical adorn- 

 ments of the city. 



But in the eighteenth century there came a change. The first 

 effective onset of political scientists against the theological oppo- 

 sition in southern Europe was made in Italy ; the most noted 

 leaders in the attack being Galiani and Maffei. 



Here and there feeble efforts were made to meet them, but it 

 was felt more and more by thinking churchmen that entirely 

 different tactics must be adopted. 



About the same time came an attack in France, and, though 

 its results were less immediate at home, they were much more 

 effective abroad. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's Spirit of the 

 Laws. In this famous book were concentrated twenty years of 

 study and thought by a great thinker on the interests of the 

 world about him. In eighteen months it went through twenty- 

 two editions ; it was translated into every civilized language ; 

 and among the things on which Montesquieu brought his wit and 

 wisdom to bear with especial force was the doctrine of the Church 

 regarding interest on loans. In doing this he was obliged to use 

 a caution in forms which seems strangely at variance with the 

 boldness of his ideas. In view of the strictness of ecclesiastical 

 control in France, he felt it safest to make his whole attack upon 

 those theological and economic follies of Mohammedan countries 

 which were similar to those which the theological spirit had 

 fastened on France.* 



By the middle of the eighteenth century the Church authori- 

 ties at Rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession : the world 

 would endure theological restriction no longer ; a way of escape 



* For Vilagut, see his Tractatus de Usuris, Venice, 1589, especially pp. 21, 25, and 399. 

 For Leotardus, see his De Usuris, Venice, 1655, especially preface, pp. 6, 1 el seq. For 

 the eighteenth century attack in Italy, see Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 48 et seq. For Montesquieu's 

 view of interest on loans, see the Esprit des Lois. 



