# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S331
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fifteen Theses on Usury. 331

on the part of the usurer is gained solely from the surplus of the same
kind of thing, and he takes into his possession something of his
neighbor's property, for which he grants the other nothing of his own
property in return. Lending at usury can therefore in truth not be
regarded as a permissible sale and purchase.

VII. Truth, and therefore the moral law, forbids regarding lending at usury as a permissible purchase of interest, or as a purchase of redeemable interest.

Proof: It belongs to the essence of the purchase of interest, or of the purchase of redeemable interest, first, that the interest be a rent (census), that is, a payment for the use of another's property, which is either of a fruit-bearing nature or loses its value through wear; but not interest (usuræ, fœnus, τόκοι); second, that the purchaser of the interest may never reclaim from the seller the capital with which he purchased that property together with the interest on its use, whereas it remains open to the seller to undo the purchase by repaying the capital. But it belongs to the essence of lending at usury that the usurer retains the right, first, to reclaim the original value of what he transferred, and further, to demand, as a thing belonging to the lender by right, a portion of the blessing which God has bestowed on the neighbor for his effort and labor — even though the thing demanded neither grows out of the lender's money, as it might out of a field, and so could be reckoned an accessory, nor does anything of the usurer's own industry remain attached to the capital, which, held in common with that of the debtor, might have earned a blessing to be divided in fairness. From this it also follows that, where those two conditions are lacking, redeemable interest is pure usury.

VIII. The moral law forbids holding lending at usury to be a permissible contract of lease.

Proof: It belongs to the essence of a contract of lease, which has movable objects for its object, that the leased thing remains the lessor's property; and since that same thing does not retain unchanged the useful qualities for the sake of which it was leased, it is equitable that the lessee, who employs it for his own benefit, make compensation for the useful qualities lost to the owner through use. But it belongs to the essence of lending at usury that the thing lent becomes the debtor's property, and its wear must never diminish the lender's estate — wherefore there can be no question of compensation here. It is, then, a claim on the ground of the use of a thing, which under the