215 
1821.] Remarks on the Usury Laws . 
narrowed by the competition, as all who 
are driven from tins traffic do not ne¬ 
cessarily resold to the line of annuities, 
the market is, notwithstanding the 
legal method of evasion, considerably 
narrowed, it has thus frequently hap¬ 
pened, that persons with excellent se¬ 
curity, and who could easily have gotten 
loans at six and a half or seven per 
cent, but for the law, are obliged to pay 
fifteen or twenty per cent.:and this not 
to private money lenders, who exact 
much more, but to the great insurance 
companies, who have fallen upon this 
way of employing their superfluous ca¬ 
pital, tempted by the double gain of 
lenders and insurers. I speak from 
the authority of assertions repeatedly 
made in Parliament, and uncontra- 
dicted, although many persons con¬ 
nected with those companies and with the 
borrowers, were present. No cases, it 
was a!lodged, had occurred in late times, 
of these companies making the borrower 
pay less, in all, than ten per cent, liow 
good soever his security (and the great¬ 
est families , nay , almost all the rvhole 
aristocracy of the country , were alluded 
to,) unless iu one instance, when the 
accidental circumstance of the borrower 
having a large estate in houses, induced 
an office to give better terms, in consi¬ 
deration of having the insurance of that 
property from fire. 
If such respectable lenders exacted 
such sums, we may be sure that the 
common money lender required far 
harder conditions, and where a mode 
of effecting the loan wholly unlaw¬ 
ful was adopted, the price paid must 
have been still much higher. The case 
mow related, furnishes a good illustra¬ 
tion of the direct pressure upon the 
borrower, occasioned by the restraints, 
because, at any rate, the price of insu¬ 
rance, which formed part of the expence, 
and that of annuity securities* was en¬ 
tirely caused by the course into which 
the necessity of evading the usury laws 
drove the transaction. 
Thus the usury laws, which were 
- originally intended to serve the neces¬ 
sitous, have, by a change in the position 
of mundane affairs, now become the 
means of preventing a man from bor¬ 
rowing money at its market value. 
Because if no such laws were enacted, 
the necessitous might be able to keep 
his,goods and sell them himself; and 
4 I have myself seen 120001. charged to 
a uable Duke for several of these annuity 
securities, and 5001. for a single one. 
nothing can prevent his selling them at 
an under price, according to Ids neces¬ 
sities. No one who has known any 
tldng of the forcible sales made in dis¬ 
tressed circumstances, will think a loss 
of fifty per cent, very extraordinary in 
such cases. I cannot illustrate this 
point better than by shewing a real 
transaction of a British nobleman in 
the sale of sundry bills at short dates, 
belonging to the firm of one of the 
money-lending houses. 
£ £ £ 
500 sold to A. for 400 given to 
* 
400 
1000 
— to K. for 900 — 
- to 
* 
900 
1800 
— to A. for 1300 — 
- to 
* 
1200 
1000 
— to H. for 800 — 
— to 
800 
800 — 
to D. for 700 
- to 
* 
700 
£5100 
4000 
one £100 myself 
100 
loss 
• 
1000 
£5,100 
1000 sold to K. —- 900 given to * 900 
1000 
— to K. —- 800 — 
to * 800 
1000 
— to K. — 807 — 
to * 807 
1000 — 
— to B. —- 650 — 
— to * 650 
>^AA 
to * - 
£4700 
3657 
loss 
. 1043 
£4700 
To such a loss as this, the most ex¬ 
orbitant usury bears no proportion; 
yet this is the way in which the dis¬ 
tressed are compelled to pay for money, 
by the law, which says, he shall not 
borrow at the rate of five and a half 
per cent. The pressure upon proprie¬ 
tors of real estates is no less severe. 
Besides the evils above mentioned, as 
arising out of tile usury laws, there is 
another in my estimation far more im¬ 
portant than all the rest, the corruptive 
influence which they exercise upon the 
morals of the people, by the pains they 
take, and cannot but take, to give birth 
to treachery and ingratitude. On this 
head Mr. Bentham, says, that “ to pur¬ 
chase a possibility of being enforced, 
the law neither has found, nor what is 
very material, must it ever hope to 
find, in this case, any other expedient 
than that of hiring a man to break his 
engagement, and to crush the hand 
that lias been reached put to help him. 
u In the case of informers in general, 
there lias been no truth plighted, nor 
benefit received. In the case of real 
criminals invited by rewards to inform 
against accomplices, it is by such breach 
of faith that society is held together, 
as 
