"Usury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the same time he is hostile to the Prince. But what is the use? We must not have any misunderstandings with him, for we need him. He has this whole region in his pocket and understands electioneering better than any one else. Besides, he is considered well-to-do and lends out money at usury which is contrary to the ordinary ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... to be as perfect as mortal laws can possibly be made. Caveat vendor will be a sound qualification of Caveat emptor in the beautifully codified Utopian law. Whether the Utopian company will be allowed to prefer this class of share to that or to issue debentures, whether indeed usury, that is to say lending money at fixed rates of interest, will be permitted at all in Utopia, one may venture to doubt. But whatever the nature of the shares a man may hold, they will all be sold at his death, and whatever he has not clearly assigned for special educational ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... round it for an hour one hot evening in the drawing-room at Queen's Gate. Finally my mother said, 'Oh, very well. If Rosalind wants a lot of fat Yid babies with hooked noses and oily hair, all lending money on usury instead of getting into debt like Christians, let her have them. I wash my hands of the lot of you. I don't know what I've done to deserve ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... gnaw the bowels of our nobles with usury, and to gull women and boys with gauds and toys—I warrant thee store of shekels in ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... will sometimes seek to hide his descent. He still feels, moreover, some of the old "wiliness" and "unkemptness" within himself; he thinks they are of the Jews and of none others—and he wants to get rid of them. He still feels some of the old usury in his bones, the clannishness, the distrust of the world, which the squalid ghetto walls the Middle Ages had built around his fathers have bequeathed to him, and he wants to get rid of those. Shall we look askance at him ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the revelation of a talent hidden in a napkin, and I set about putting it to usury. I wrote a lecture—"Women and Politics"—as a reason for my anomalous position and a justification of those men who had endorsed my right to be a political leader, and gave sketches of women in sacred and profane ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... I'll be Mammon. I'll lend money at usury—that's what they do at all schools accordin' to the B.O.P. Penny a week on a shillin'. That'll startle Heffy's weak intellect. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... such contempt, such scorn, such repulsion, concentrated in one single ejaculation! It told the woman everything. It told of a failure so complete that hope became an emotion driven forever from her heart. It told her that the usury of life was beyond all belief. It told her that the interest demanded for every pledged moment was without pity, or mercy, or justice. Now she knew how she had pawned, and, oh God, the interest which ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... organization, and administration of justice. The classes and status of slaves, and the causes of enslavement are recounted. Their customs in marriages and dowries, divorces, adoption, and inheritance are described; also in usury, trading, and punishment for crimes. The standard of social purity is described by Morga as being very low; yet infamous vices were not indigenous with them, but communicated by foreigners, especially by the Chinese. The natives of Luzon appear to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... reason of existence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on the farmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment; and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return for usury a stately and permanent center, but only this ragged camp. It is a "parasitic Greek civilization"—minus ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... is nature in me; ruin can't cure it. Even now I would be gaming. Taught by experience as I am, and knowing this poor sum is all that's left us, I am for venturing still. And say I am to blame; yet will this little supply our wants? No; we must put it out to usury. Whether 'tis madness in me, or some resistless impulse of good fortune, I ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... fling, 'tis but a thousand Duckets, Which I can cozen up again in ten days, And some few Jewels to justifie my Knavery, Say, I should marry her, she'll get more money Than all my Usury, put my Knavery to it, She appears the most infallible way of Purchase, I you'd wish her a size or two stronger for the encounter, For I am like a Lion where I lay hold, But these Lambs will endure a plaguy load, And never bleat neither, that Sir, time has taught us, I am so vertuous now, ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot afore-mentioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... avaricious monster lent his money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. To explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room, and the miserable contents of the dusty wardrobe, would be unnecessary: we shall only notice the more striking ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Overvalue things, because they are foreign, absent Owe ourselves chiefly and mostly to ourselves Passion has a more absolute command over us than reason Passion has already confounded his judgment Passion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born Pay very strict usury who did not in due time pay the principal People are willing to be gulled in what they desire People conceiving they have right and title to be judges Perfect friendship I speak of is indivisible Perfect men as they are, they are yet ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... Labor. Usury. Economics. Punishment for Debts. Healing. Peace. Marriage. Celibacy. Adultery. Divorce. Faulty Judgment. Unconvincing. Prohibition. ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... for our doctrine and defend our discipline pointing to you? If you go on to be a Puritan, said Shame to Faithful, you will have to ask your neighbour's forgiveness even for petty faults, and you will have to make restitution with usury where you have taken anything from any one, and how will you ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... Commandment is to do good, to give and lend willingly, to be liberal; the contrary is covetousness, stealing, usury, fraud, and to ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... returned with usury to her father, the severity and the domination she suffered at the hands of Rion—yet this prince, in his weakness, was not less submissive to her, attentive to her, or afraid of her. He was afflicted with the public reign of Rion, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... universal white. Of late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices? And to-day, also, I ordered from a nursery-man more trees ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... the ill-gotten gain, mother, it will never prosper; you had better go to bed, and I will do the same. I suppose it would be impossible to sleep with that yellow usury on the floor. I should have Plutus at the head of the imps of darkness about my bed, instead of "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John," that I used to pray to "bless the bed that I ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... mount it now None lifts his foot from earth: and hence my rule Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves; The walls, for abbey rear'd, turned into dens, The cowls to sacks choak'd up with musty meal. Foul usury doth not more lift itself Against God's pleasure, than that fruit which makes The hearts of monks so wanton: for whate'er Is in the church's keeping, all pertains. To such, as sue for heav'n's sweet sake, and not To those who in respect of kindred claim, Or on more vile allowance. Mortal flesh ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... political discontent. Farmers were overmortgaged, laborers were underpaid, and the poor were growing poorer, while the rich were daily growing richer. "The paramount issues," the new party declared, "are the abolition of usury, monopoly, and trusts, and we denounce the Republican and Democratic parties for creating and perpetuating these ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... every farthing of my money was paid back to them. The tyrant took the thirty shillings that my dear parents had given me, and said he should put them into the poor-box at church; and, after having made a long discourse to the boys about meanness and usury, he said, "Take off your coat, Mr. Stubbs, and restore Bunting his waistcoat." I did, and stood without coat and waistcoat in the midst of the nasty grinning boys. I was going to put on ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... burial is again marked by miracles. Rich men vied with each other in making funeral offerings. One gave him a magnificent stone coffin, but this man had been a usurer. Usury was a sin abhorred by Saint Bernard, and the people found that no force or persuasion could place his body within this coffin. So another tomb, less pretentious, but more worthy, was found. At the end Bernard's remains were divided among the churches, each of whom claimed him as its own. To the Hospice ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... pointed out to him that publishing was a very respectable business when fairly and properly carried on, and not one that ought to weigh heavy upon a man at the last like the record of a career of successful usury or burgling. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... the autumn elections, and told them his political principles.[37] He was in favor of internal improvements, such as opening roads, clearing streams, building a railroad across Sangamon County, and making the Sangamon River straight and navigable. He advocated a usury law, and hazarded the extraordinary argument that "in cases of extreme necessity there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect." A law ameliorated by infractions is no uncommon thing, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... gains are akin to the passion of usury; these are tricks of the usurer to grasp his gold in act and imagination. Have none of them. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Boules, near the rue Bertin-Poiree, in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, where he had been married. He first acted on commission for the Benedictine-Camalduian fathers of the forest of Senart, who had heard of him as a man wholly given to piety; then, giving himself up to usury, he undertook what is known as "business affairs," a profession which, in such hands, could not fail to be lucrative, being aided by his exemplary morals and honest appearance. It was the more easy for him to impose on others, as he could not be accused of any of the deadly ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... have been wrecked in the launching, and the country thrown back into chaos. Fortunately the intrigue failed. Baldwin passed over to the opposition, but he was unable to lead the Reformers of Upper Canada into killing government measures such as extension of the main highways, reform of the usury laws, establishment of a comprehensive municipal system. They followed the sounder leadership of Hincks and supported Sydenham in his wise efforts to ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... a remark, which both Mr. Macbean and I thought new. It was this: that 'the law against usury is for the protection of creditors as well as of debtors; for if there were no such check, people would be apt, from the temptation of great interest, to lend to desperate persons, by whom they would lose their money. Accordingly there ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... houses in this and other cities. Among the recent letters received in correspondence of this sort are letters from the Secretary of State of every State in the Union with regard to rates of interest and usury laws, and letters from each of our city banks as to methods of reckoning time on paper, the basis of interest calculations, the practices concerning deposit balances, and other business matters subject to ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... maske to move, With his bright Tead that flames with many a flake, And many a bachelor to waite on him, In theyr fresh garments trim. Bid her awake therefore, and soone her dight, For lo! the wished day is come at last, That shall, for all the paynes and sorrowes past, Pay to her usury of long delight: And, whylest she doth her dight, Doe ye to her of joy and solace sing, That all the woods may answer, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... attempted to legalise excessive usury,—I mean with respect to the affair of loans,—my dignity would not permit me to tolerate so public and scandalous an evil. Therefore I held an assembly of the clergy, where, without so much as mentioning the Cardinal's name in the conferences, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... earth is so respected as that of the man who controls the flow of money; all other human institutions are as nothing beside him. Justice herself takes the form of a commissioner, a familiar personage in the eyes of the market; but usury seated behind its green boxes,—usury, entreated with fear tugging at the heart-strings, dries up all jesting, parches the throat, lowers the proudest look, and makes the commonest ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... idolatry were performed in private houses. The decline in morals kept pace with the decline of spiritual religion. There was no vice which was not rampant throughout the land,—adultery, oppression of foreigners, venality in judges, falsehood, dishonesty in trade, usury, cruelty to debtors, robbery and murder, the loosing of the ties of kindred, general suspicion of neighbors,—all the crimes enumerated by the Apostle Paul among the Romans. Judah in reality had become an idolatrous nation like Tyre and Syria and Egypt, with only here ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... grave. No one knows, or values thy sterling piety half so tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated so long with zealous Catholics, that she is already ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... being in stature twelve foot high and no less than 93 inches round the chest, had landed in their country 150,000 years previously, and finding them very barbarous, slaying one another and unacquainted with the use of letters, the precious metals, or the art of usury, had instructed them in civilization, endowed them with letters, a coinage, police, lawyers, instruments of torture, and all the other requisites of a great State, and had finally drawn up for them this code of law or custom, which they carefully preserved ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... view, this seems to be the only defensible provision, as it would tend to discourage usury, a common evil in money transactions between Europeans and Natives; but because it interfered with Mr. Jabavu's personal aims, that is the only flaw. The cold-blooded evictions and the Draconian principle against living anywhere, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... this dog of a Jew, and still more every general reflection on Jewish usury, avarice, and cruelty, I felt poignantly. No power of imagination could make me pity Shylock, but I felt the force of some of his appeals to justice; and some passages struck me in quite a new light on the Jewish side ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... his overwhelming astonishment it was first made clear to him that he had no longer a penny under heaven, he had gone in his bewilderment to his brother, a man whose share of the patrimony had not been squandered—had been put out to usury rather, bringing in thirty, forty, a hundredfold—a man living in luxury and holding the respect of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... the price of grain fell very much, because it could not be consumed, and the merchants gave no more for it than they chose. And thus the poor farmers soon had to work for nothing, all their sweat and labor going with usury into the pockets of the tradesmen. The trade to Barbados now began to increase, and the merchants and the governor to make more gains. The common people, who could not trade to Barbados, but could buy what they wanted at Boston as cheaply as they could order it from Barbados, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... understand perfectly, it is absolute usury. But time is ready money, and in six months it will be easier for me to pay one hundred and forty thousand francs than a hundred thousand ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... fear lest ever again they be lured by specious promises to suffer usury at the hands of Yahn, who is overskilled in Law. Only Yahn sits and smiles, watching his hoard increase in preciousness, and hath no pity for the poor shadows whom he hath lured from their quiet to toil ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... hath, and not according to what he hath not," we labour humbly and diligently; then, not only does the talent itself become increased, so that our Lord, when he comes to reckon with us, may receive his own with usury: but a blessing of another kind is added to our labours, again, as in the former case, making those who were last to become first. For if there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... alone in an after-dinner speech if he was present, nor to a time when he did not take my extravagance concerning him and misstatements about him in good part, nor yet to a time when he did not pay them back with usury when his turn came. The last speech he made was at my birthday dinner at the end of November, when naturally I was his text; my last word to him was in a letter the next day; a day later I was illustrating a fantastic article on art with his portrait among others—a portrait now to be laid reverently ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... when I got into my own house, I was ready to find fault with everything, and to vent the bitterness of my spirit on my poor little wife. But, to my surprise, she did not answer me back, far less repay my disparaging remarks with usury, which she might very well have done, and would have done a few days before. I could not help seeing, too, that she had been taking pains to make the room look tidier than usual. My supper was ready for me, my slippers set by the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... red trade, yet is it better and more honest than some. Better is it to slay a man in fair fight than to suck out his heart's blood in buying and selling and usury after your white fashion. Many a man have I slain, yet is there never a one that I should fear to look in the face again, ay, many are there who once were friends, and whom I should be right glad to snuff with. But there! there! thou hast thy ways, and I ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... conscience grapples to an excuse as a drowning wretch to a straw. And yet this hard father—this cautious, moral, money-loving man, three months afterwards, suffered a rogue—almost a stranger—to decoy him into a speculation that promised to bring him fifty per cent. He invested in the traffic of usury what had sufficed to save a hundred such as I am from perdition, and he lost it all. It was nearly his whole fortune; but he lives and has his luxuries still: he cannot speculate, but he can save: he cared not if I starved, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... himself from the fatal noose. He must pay whatever the cold-eyed creditor demanded. Two thousand dollars was the sum asked for the acknowledgment of having appropriated five hundred. Twopence for halfpenny has been accounted fair usury among the Jews; but in Christian communities it is only crime that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... silver coins. These we melted and culled. Some were recoined at the Mint, and with the rest we supplied the refiners, plate-workers, and merchants who required the precious metals. Whenever we received money at usury, we gave a bond, and my patron was always able to lend it out again, either to the Government or to others at a still higher rate of usury. At times, the stranger from the country might have supposed that ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... abuse, but it never felt itself strong enough, or had leisure enough, to deal with the general source from which the particular grievance sprang. Turgot's Memorial is as cogent an exposure of the mischief of Usury Laws to the public prosperity, as the more renowned pages either of Bentham or J. B. Say on the same subject, and it has the merit of containing an explanation at once singularly patient and singularly intelligent, of the origin of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place. The honourable Member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean race, a sordid race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to all honourable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that they have neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit for which they are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sentiments. Such, Sir, has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. They never fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices which persecution has engendered. England ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we play'd at small Game, and stopp'd the small Caravans; thus I gradually lessen'd the wide Disproportion, which there was at first between me and the rest of Mankind: I enjoy'd not only my full Share of the good Things of this Life, but enjoy'd them with Usury. I was look'd upon as a Man of Consequence, and I procur'd this Castle by my military Atchievements. The Satrap of Syria had Thoughts of dispossessing me; but I was then too rich to be any Ways afraid of him; I gave the Satrap ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... captain. "I've got to play something though: got to pay the shot, my son." And he struck up "John Brown's Body" in a fine sweet baritone: "Dandy Jim of Carolina" came next; "Rorin the Bold," "Swing low, Sweet Chariot," and "The Beautiful Land" followed. The captain was paying his shot with usury, as he had done many a time before; many a meal had he bought with the same currency from the melodious-minded natives, always, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... generalizations were deduced. A number of other very important cases which I included in my plan of proofs and illustrations I have been obliged to leave out for lack of space. Such are: Demonism, Primitive Religion, and Witchcraft; The Status of Women; War; Evolution and the Mores; Usury; Gambling; Societal Organization and Classes; Mortuary Usages; Oaths; Taboos; Ethics; AEsthetics; and Democracy. The first four of these are written. I may be able to publish them soon, separately. My next task ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... questions of the day. Mill still held to competition, to the full liberty of individuals, to the inevitable mechanical working of economic laws; he still doubted the expediency of factory legislation, and condemned any laws in restraint of usury. He was opposed, broadly, to all authoritative intrusion upon human existence wherever its necessity could not be proved conclusively to be in the interest of a self-reliant community. Yet he was forced to make concessions and exceptions in the face of actual needs and grievances; and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... drachmas; Agathocles the Stoic quarrelling with his disciples about the salary for tuition; Clinias the orator stealing a phial out of the temple; not to mention a thousand others, who were undermining walls, litigating in the forum, extorting money, or lending it upon usury; a sight, upon ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... As adultery, usury, murder and suicide are among these little eccentricities, offset against superstition, religion and rationalism, the reader may take his choice of theories. Interest is sustained without question, and the two women—an older ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... it but a refined species of usury? a hoard lodged beyond all reach of bankruptcy? a store for futurity? exempt from the numerous losses and disappointments of those who mistake the blessing of wealth to consist in its power of ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... Gaubertin had lived at Ville-aux-Fayes, they would have quarrelled; their various pretensions would have clashed; but fate ordained that the Lucullus of Blangy felt too strongly the need of solitude, in which to wallow at his ease in usury and sensuality, to live anywhere but at Blangy; that Madame Soudry had sense enough to see that she could reign nowhere else except at Soulanges; and that Ville-aux-Fayes was Gaubertin's place of business. Those who enjoy studying social nature will admit that General ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... make sure of a little fund which may maintain them in old age, secure their self-respect, and add to their personal comfort and social well-being. Thrift is not in any way connected with avarice, usury, greed, or selfishness. It is, in fact, the very reverse ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... very prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay, with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others she had exercised no more for her own amusement than ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... all things ready," he said, "come to me for the letter of introduction, and also for that which may obtain you a worthy outfit for your journeying to Plassenburg. Or, if you are already Sir Proud-Heart, you can repay me one day, with usury if you will. I care not to stand on observances with you, nor desire that you should feel any obligation ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... nearest his heart is his collection of postage-stamps. This is his treasure; and he always speaks of it as though he were going to get a fortune out of it. His companions accuse him of miserliness and usury. I do not know: I like him; he teaches me a great many things; he seems a man to me. Coretti, the son of the wood-merchant, says that he would not give him his postage-stamps to save his mother's life. My father ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... passions have amalgamated to form that hatred? It is partly the result of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a million; and when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaberdine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... poor people of Lille in their necessities, and also for the salvation of his own soul and the souls of his predecessors and successors, he wished to establish a Mont-de-Piete, where money loans should be made without usury or interest, and not as they were ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... merciful. In a statute, however, which was passed in his third year, he forbade Jews practising usury, required them to wear badges of yellow taffety, as a distinguishing mark of their nationality, and demanded from each of them threepence every Easter. Then began the plunder. The king wanted money to build Carnarvon ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the accumulations of the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was married. He never lent more than a third of the value of the property, and required notes payable to his order for an additional interest of two and a half per cent spread over the whole duration of the loan. Such were the rules his father had told him to follow. Usury, that clog upon the ambition of the peasantry, is the destroyer of country regions. This levy of seven and a half per cent seemed, therefore, so reasonable to the borrowers that Jean-Jacques Rouget had his choice of investments; and the notaries of the different ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... passion, or a love, Who, through a life of luxury and lies, 205 Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, Support the system whence their honours flow... They have three words:—well tyrants know their use, Well pay them for the loan, with usury Torn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell, and Heaven. 210 A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage Of tameless tigers hungering for blood. Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire, Where poisonous and undying worms prolong 215 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to any of my people with thee that is poor, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him usury. If thou at all take thy neighbor's garment to pledge, thou shalt restore it unto him before the sun goeth down; for that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep? And it shall come to pass when he crieth unto me, that I will hear; ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... some time his attention was drawn by Mr. W.C. Sillar to the question of "Usury." At first he had seen no crying sin in Interest. He had held that the "rights of capital" were visionary, and that the tools should belong to him that can handle them, in a perfect state of society; but he thought ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... social fiction, and had an abuse to let out on hire; he who was guardian of some falsehood, doorkeeper of some prejudice, or farmer of some superstition; he who was taking advantage of another, or dealing in usury, oppression and falsehood; he who sold by false weights, from those who falsify a balance to those who falsify the Bible; from the cheating merchant to the cheating priest; from those who manipulate figures to those who traffic in miracles,—all, from the Jew banker who feels that he ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... lovely image of her mother; my heart was wholly wrapt up in her; for her sake I felt called upon not so much to obtain a large fortune for her as to increase what I had already got. It is the truth that I lent money at a high rate of interest; but it is a foul calumny to accuse me of deceitful usury. And who are these my accusers? Thoughtless, frivolous people who worry me to death until I lend them money, which they immediately go and squander like a thing of no worth, and then get in a rage if I demand inexorable punctuality ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... seem that even self-love may be the dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of giving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... their crops could be gathered.[10] Some planters who sympathized with the Negroes brought forward the scheme of protecting them by advancing certain necessities at more reasonable prices. As the planter himself, however, was subject to usury, the scheme did not give much relief. The Negroes' crop, therefore, when gathered went either to the merchant or to the planter to pay the rent; for the merchant's supplies were secured by a mortgage on the tenant's personal property and a pledge of the growing crop. This often prevented ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... my duty in all honor and honesty," he cries, softly, as if the dead man's spirit were there to hear. "I have defrauded no one, I have taken no money upon usury, I have been true to the living, true to the dead." And again he seems to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... as conspired and planned by able leaders, it is usually seen that it was their care from the very beginning, that arms and ammunition should be at hand when and wherever required; while usury, ambition, or vengeance lavishly provide the money to render the revolution popular: but we had never dreamed of making any preparation, because we diggers had taken up arms solely in self-defence; and as up to Saturday the Council of the Eureka Stockade counted in ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... gratitude; but that when the father thus descended to the grave before his time, and by an anticipated and living burial sought to provide for the welfare of his realms and the grandeur of his son, the benefit thus conferred was surely far greater. He added that the debt would be paid to him and with usury, should Philip conduct himself in his administration of the province with a wise and affectionate regard ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... be awfully glad if you would look for yourself," he said earnestly. "I feel that in some way you associate Lady Bartholomew's illness with some horrible act of usury on my part—will you satisfy yourself and in doing so ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... him, he violates them daily. He will overreach you in a bargain, and think it all right. If your business comes in contact with his, he will use every means in his power to break you down, even to the extent of secretly attacking your credit. He will lend his money on usury, and when he has none to lend, will play the jackal to some money-lion, and get a large share of the spoil for himself. And further, if you differ in faith from him, in his heart will send you to hell with as much pleasure as he would derive from cheating you ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... object, however, to the interest capital receives. Banks have no enemy in this proposed change, and we suspect either the motives or the judgment of those whose stock in trade is a howl against banks, and what they call usury. Money has its place in civilization, and the bank where it is dealt in is a shop just as much as is the dry goods store or grocery, and is entitled to its profits just the same. If a man earns $5,000 he should be allowed to charge something for ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... and he got a bond for the payment of an additional sum, which they thought proper to fix at about six hundred thousand pounds, to which was added another usurious bond for sixty thousand; and in order to extort these forced bonds, and to make up their aggravated crimes of usury, violence, and oppression, they put these eunuchs into prison, without food and water, and loaded their limbs with fetters. This was their second imprisonment; and what followed these few severities your Lordships will remark,—still ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... scarlet, sensual lips. His grandfather, report said, had been a prize-fighting Israelite, and afterward a celebrated betting-man—equally eminent in either ring for an unscrupulous scoundrelism which made his fortune. His father had added to the family treasure and importance by cautious usury and adventurous stock-jobbing. Horace himself was a gentleman at large, with no other profession than the consistent pursuit of all kinds of debauchery. He was calculating even in his pleasures, and, they say, kept a regular ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... it please you,' said Isaac, 'before I depart. The gentile despises the Jew. He charges upon him usury and extortion. He accuses him of avarice. He believes him to subsist upon the very life blood of whomsoever he can draw into his meshes. I have known those who have firm faith that the Jew feeds but upon the flesh and blood of Pagan and Christian infants, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... would have been greatly prolonged, with possibly another, or at least a doubtful issue. He afterward served in the Massachusetts legislature, and there made several noted speeches, among others his argument on the repeal of the usury laws, a bill for which was unexpectedly carried in that body as the result of this speech which has been reprinted for use before legislatures ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the descendants of Dyak slaves remain the property of their masters. Besides these, there are slave debtors, whole families who have sold themselves to pay the accumulations arising from taxes or impositions of the Malays which they had no hope of repaying. Usury, which was the fountain of this evil, has been forbidden at Sarawak, and many are the slave debtors whom the Rajah's ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... each other in the expression of their sentiments, in their habits of business, their plausibility, natural tact, and especially, in that hardness of heart and utter want of all human pity and sympathy, upon which the success of their black arts of usury and extortion essentially depends. With extortion in all its forms Skinadre, for instance, was familiar. From those who were poor but honest, he got a bill such as he exacted from Hacket, because ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... bargains, when a man buys not to hold but to sell over again, that commonly grindeth double, both upon the seller and upon the buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, if the hands be well chosen that are trusted. Usury is the certainest means of gain, tho one of the worst; as that whereby a man doth eat his bread in sudore vultus alieni;[30] and besides, doth plough upon Sundays. But yet certain tho it be, it hath ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... cheerful heart and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. This is a lesson the American has yet to learn,—capability of amusement on a low key. He expects rapid and extraordinary returns. He would make the very elemental laws pay usury. He has nothing to invest in a walk; it is too slow, too cheap. We crave the astonishing, the exciting, the far away, and do not know the highways of the gods when we see them,—always a sign of the decay of the faith and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... amateur farmer, recruited from town, soon repented that he had ever listened to the alluring call of "back to the land" and after a few weeks of disillusion in the country, returned to town and sought to get his money out again at usury. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... part, participation; advantage, benefit, weal, behoof; usury. Antonyms: boredom, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Samurai were forbidden usury, that is to say, the lending of money at fixed rates of interest. They are still under that interdiction, but since our commercial code practically prevents usury altogether, and our law will not recognize contracts for interest upon private accommodation loans ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... hard work. In the first three years of their married life Sauviat continued to do some peddling, and his wife accompanied him, carrying iron or lead on her back, and leading the miserable horse and cart full of crockery with which her husband plied a disguised usury. Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as almonds, Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... inspiring example of the true workman, says, 'The thrift of time will repay in after life with usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and the waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... were brooding in retirement over their wrongs, or had crossed the sea and joined the standard of William. Their place was supplied by men who had long suffered oppression, and who, finding themselves suddenly transformed from slaves into masters, were impatient to pay back, with accumulated usury, the heavy debt of injuries and insults. The new soldiers, it was said, never passed an Englishman without cursing him and calling him by some foul name. They were the terror of every Protestant innkeeper; for, from the moment when they came under ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and mines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the false names of debtors ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... just neglect; And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect. Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood; And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good. Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ; Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy. The man, who, by this steady course, has happiness insured, When earth's foundations shake, shall ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... freedom, that the removal of external constraint can be justified and produces the greater good of the greater number only where a stern empire over self takes its place. Without this it would not prevent or avoid idleness, usury or over-population. Freedom must not be simply negative. It must be positive. If on account of the immaturity or over-maturity of a people, there be no sturdy middle class among them, unlimited competition may become what ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... all that concerns us here is that an opportunity for profit—that is, a potential property interest—was outlawed. In consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the business. Usury therefore came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from the current ethical formulation, who were "protected," for a consideration, by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests may be ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... She asked this question so eagerly, she suddenly forgot her anger in the desire she felt to relate her injuries. "A Guinigi palace dressed out like a booth at a fair!—What a scandal! This comes of usury and banking. He will be a deputy soon. Will no one tell him he is a presumptuous young idiot?" she cried, with a burst of sudden rage, remembering the crowds that filled the streets, and the admiration and display excited. Then, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... culture has degenerated. The laborer, deprived of his stock, has been unable to sow; the tax was augmented, and he could not pay it; the bastinado has been threatened, and he has borrowed. Money, from want of security, being locked up from circulation, interest was therefore enormous, and the usury of the rich has aggravated ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... apothecary invent cardboard shoe-soles for the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard, sold as leather, four hundred thousand francs of income; let a pork-packer espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and of which it is the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward of a fine family ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... too, with alarm, that to all means for the accomplishment of his project he would be urged by despair; for his debts are great, and his character nothing but new wealth can support. I knew that he was able, bold, determined, and that he had taken with him a large supply of money borrowed upon usury,—in a word, I trembled for you both. I have now seen your daughter, and I tremble no more. Accomplished seducer as Peschiera boasts himself, the first look upon her face so sweet, yet so noble, convinced me that she is proof against a legion of Peschieras. Now, then, return we to this all-important ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... say, a fortune for our part of the world. Very likely he may have a couple of score thousand francs by now. But if I were to give you a thousand guesses, you would never find out how he made the money. He is a usurer, and his scheme of usury is so profoundly and so cleverly based upon the requirements of the whole canton, that I should merely waste my time if I were to take it upon myself to undeceive them as to the benefits which they reap, in their own opinion, from ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... deepening with the crime from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath, sullenness, or unwillingness to be pleased with the creation, disbelief in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences), usury, murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction and other carnal enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft, trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery (on the great Italian scale), sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the Church, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... compelled to banish yourselves from your native city, and seize on the Sacred mount; the same, against which ye provided for yourselves the protection of tribunes; the same, on account of which two armies of you took post on the Aventine; the same, which violently opposed the laws against usury, and always the agrarian laws; the same, which broke through the right of intermarriage between the patricians and the commons; the same, which shut up the road to curule offices against the commons: this is a name, more hostile ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... adverse legislation of cortes or parliaments. But the wealth which procured Jews and New Christians so much worldly influence became the occasion of great suffering. The "Old Christians," being less industrious, and therefore less affluent, were frequently their debtors. And although usury was checked by legislators, who dreaded its pressure on themselves, and debts were often repudiated, the Jews maintained their position of creditors; and, as the Cartilla says, creditors are often unreasonable persons, or, at least, are considered to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... to be paid, however it may exceed the usual or legal rate of interest. The affair is, however, only regarded as valid upon the ground of necessity; and thus exacting more than the interest allowed by law is not deemed usury. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... King might seize at his pleasure, though none of his subjects could touch it. The Jew's special capacity—in which Christians were forbidden by the Church to employ themselves through fear of the sin of usury—-was that of money-lender. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the aspect and distribution of the houses, domestic life—The family patrimony: division of the inheritance—Lending on usury, the rate of interest, commercial intercourse by land and sea—Trade corporations: brick-making, industrial implements in stone and metal, goldsmiths, engravers of cylinders, weavers; the state of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching—first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she used to sell the covering—the gown without the woman, or the woman ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... "The usury laws," replied Hornby, with his usual saturnine sneer, "would prevent my acceptance of your obliging offer, even if I had the present means, which I have not. My spare cash happens just now to be temporarily ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... literature in Germany cut loose from French moorings, they had an English pilot aboard; and in the translations from German romances, dramas, and ballads that were made by Scott, Coleridge, Taylor, Lewis, and others, English literature was merely taking back with usury what it had lent its younger sister. Mention has already been made of Buerger's and Herder's renderings from Percy's "Reliques,"[3] an edition of which was published at Goettingen in 1767; as well as of the strong excitement aroused in Germany by MacPherson's "Ossian."[4] This last ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and prodigal hand, restored them to the people. With many disorders, and with few political checks upon power, Nature had still fair play; the sources of acquisition were not dried up; and therefore the trade, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country flourished. Even avarice and usury itself operated both for the preservation and the employment of national wealth. The husbandman and manufacturer paid heavy interest, but then they augmented the fund from whence they were again to borrow. Their resources were dearly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... so ignorant of usury, this was not bad. We thanked him acidly, offered the Bonds for sale, and, after a little calculation, accepted two hundred and forty-three ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... proxenetism. It is indisputable that commerce made with the body of one's neighbor is illegal, even when the latter gives consent. It is a crime or misdemeanor which should be prosecuted like negro slavery or usury. We should not wait for a complaint to be lodged, but prosecute proxenetism officially, for the victims are hindered by shame from coming forward. The pimps of proxenetism are recruited from the dregs of society. In this ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... left it to me, then, madame, who know what they are; but you wished to be frugal, and consequently to lend at usury." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from that earnest, masterful, persuasive suitor his just dues, she now feels such ethical qualms as to prompt payment with usury. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... this state of things was incalculable social affliction. Usury and law-suits completed ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... daughter of that Man should be, Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts did frame A growing Maiden, who, from day to day Advancing still in stature, and in grace, Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface, And his paternal cares with usury pay. I still retain the phantom, as I can; And call the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... they continued to lend at high interest the people would set fire to their houses and he would not proceed against them. So the landlords became affrighted and amended their lives." The rural people of Japan have always three weapons against usury, it was explained to me. First, there may be tried injuring the offending person's house—rural dwellings are mainly bamboo work and mud—by bumping into it with the heavy palanquin which is carried about the roadway at the time of the annual festival. If such a hint should ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... as amongst Christians there are seven deadly sins: idolatry, murder, falsely charging modest women with unchastity, robbing orphans, usury, desertion in Holy War and disobedience to parents. The difference between the two creeds is noteworthy. And the sage knows only three, intemperance, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... them with the care of their money. My old chief (whose name I should have mentioned before was Ulu-bibi), held large sums in trust for many of the people with whom he was acquainted; but his avarice inducing him to lend the money out on usury, it was very difficult to recover it when it was desired, although it was always religiously paid back. I had not been many months at Scutari, before I found myself in high favour, from my superior howling, and the duration of my convulsions. But during this state, which by habit ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... wheel. Men of the northern blood will sometimes lend their assent to poetical images, even to those that do not stun the mind lie bludgeons and imperatively, by much repetition, command their assent; and it is for a solid exchange and interest in usury with soft poetical creatures when they are so condescending; but they are seized by the grotesque. In spite of efforts to efface or supplant it, he saw the white cat, nothing else, even to thinking that she had jumped cleverly to catch the wheel. He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ourselves, and listen, in the midst of the silence of midday. And in this so venerable place, where dilapidation and the usury of centuries are revealed on every side—even on the marble columns worn by the constant friction of hands—this voice of gold that rises alone seems as if it were intoning the last lament over the death-pang of Old Islam and the end of time, the elegy, as it were, of the universal ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... sought to extort more. Stanley refused to be bullied, whereupon the chief threatened to attack him in force. Let Stanley now tell the story, for it is an illustration of the way he combated the usury and cunning ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... hour of twelve till that of two at a coffee-house near the 'Change, and had a seat (though without a canopy) sacred to himself, where he gave diurnal audiences concerning commerce, politics, tare and tret, usury and abatement, with all things necessary for helping the distressed, who were willing to give one limb for the better maintenance of the rest; or such joyous youths, whose philosophy is confined to the present hour, and were desirous to call in the revenue of next half-year to double the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... the reign of Edward VI. religious zeal prohibited all interest. This prohibition, however, like all others of the same kind, is said to have produced no effect, and probably rather increased than diminished the evil of usury. The statute of Henry VIII. was revived by the 13th of Elizabeth, cap. 8. and ten per cent. continued to be the legal rate of interest till the 21st of James I. when it was restricted to eight per cent. It was reduced to six per cent. soon after the Restoration, and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... annihilated. She did not derive, as our author chooses to assert, any advantages from the debility of her credit. Its consequence was the natural one: she borrowed; but she borrowed upon bad terms, indeed on the most exorbitant usury. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Strand from fulness of joy at so much Life.—All these emotions must be strange to you. So are your rural emotions to me. But consider, what must I have been doing all my life, not to have lent great portions of my heart with usury to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... worship, their desecration of its most holy symbols, and of their crucifixion, or other sacrifice, of Christian children, at the celebration of their own passover. [14] With these foolish calumnies, the more probable charge of usury and extortion was industriously preferred against them, till at length, towards the close of the fourteenth century, the fanatical populace, stimulated in many instances by the no less fanatical clergy, and perhaps encouraged by the numerous class of debtors to the Jews, who found this ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... example on the credit side of her governing is the very complete and successful system of land-banks, introduced by Frederick the Great and since modelled somewhat upon the French methods, which have protected the farmer from usury, insured him money at low rates for improvements, for the purchase of tools, cattle, and fertilizers, and enabled him to do, by sensible co-operation, what would have been impossible for him as an individual. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... 4, 32, 26, Section 1.] Property would double, at eight and one third, in twelve years, not so rapidly as by our system of compound interest, especially at the rate of seven per cent. In England the usury laws of different monarchs limited interest from ten per cent, to five; but these were repealed in 1854. Only five per cent. can now be recovered upon ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... cheap that you might sell them dear was a legal offence (forestalling): to buy goods in the market in the morning and to sell them in the afternoon in the same place was not thought a useful occupation and was forbidden under the name of regrating; usury, instead of leading as now directly to the highest offices of the State, was thought wrong, and the profit of it mostly fell to the chosen people of God: the robbery of the workers, thought necessary then as now to the very existence of the State, was carried out quite crudely without any ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... position in a characteristic speech, especially answering General Banks's argument that we should pay this amount from a spirit of friendship for Russia. "If," said General Butler, "we are to pay this price as usury on the friendship of Russia, we are paying for it very dear indeed. If we are to pay for her friendship, I desire to give her the seven million two hundred thousand dollars in cash, and let her keep Alaska, because I think it may ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
