338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Holy See, allowing the faithful to take moderate interest under 

 condition that any future decisions of the Pope should he im- 

 plicitly obeyed. Social science as applied to political economy 

 had gained a victory final and complete. The Torlonia family 

 at Rome to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affilia- 

 tions, and papal favor — all won by lending money at interest 

 and by devotion to the Roman See — is but one out of many 

 growths of its kind on ramparts long since surrendered and 

 deserted.* 



The dealings of theology with public economy were by no 

 means confined to the taking of interest for money. It would be 

 interesting to note the restrictions placed upon commerce by 

 the Church prohibition of commercial intercourse with infidels, 

 against which the Republic of Venice fought a good fight ; to note 

 how, by a most curious perversion of Scripture in the Greek 

 Church, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented from 

 raising and eating potatoes ; how, in Scotland, at the beginning 

 of this century, the use of fanning-mills for winnowing grain was 

 widely denounced as contrary to the text, " The wind bloweth 

 where it listeth,'' etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is " prince of 

 the powers of the air," and therefore as sufficient cause for ex- 

 communication from the Scotch Church. Instructive it would 

 be also to note how the introduction of railways was declared by 

 an archbishop of the French Church to be an evidence of the 

 divine displeasure against country innkeepers who set meat before 

 their guests on fast-days, and who were now punished by seeing 

 travelers carried by their doors; how railways and telegraphs 

 were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of Anti- 

 christ ; and how in Protestant England the curate of Rotherhithe, 

 at the breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life 

 and property, declared it from his pulpit a just judgment upon 

 the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man. 



The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious 

 men to the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, 



* For the decree forbidding confessors to trouble lenders of money at legal interest, see 

 Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, as above ; also Mastrofini, as above, in the appen- 

 dix, where various other recent Roman decrees are given. As to the controversy generally, 

 see Mastrofini ; also La Replique des douze Docteurs, cited by Guillaumin and Coquelin ; 

 also Reusch, vol. ii, p. 850. As an example of Mastrofini's way of making black appear 

 white, compare the Latin text of the decree on p. 97 with his statements regarding it ; see 

 also his cunning substitution of the new significance of the word usury for the old in vari- 

 ous parts of his work. A good historical presentation of the general subject will be found 

 in Roscher, Geschichte dcr National-Oeconomie in Deutschland, Miinchen, 18'74, under arti- 

 cles Wuchcr and Zinsnehmen. For France, see especially Petit, Traite de I'TTsure, Paris, 

 1840 ; and for Germany see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865. 

 For the view of a modern leader of thought in this field, see Jeremy Bentham, Defense of 

 Usury, Letter X. 



