# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S333
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fifteen Theses on Usury. 333

-quited with like; thus here: a friendly disposition shown in
rendering help, with a like disposition. To claim the surrender of
another's property without this disposition, as requital for the
friendly disposition, would be contrary to the idea of just requital
and therefore contrary to the moral law; and if it were bound up
with this disposition, an excess would be demanded, which is
unjust. Since, moreover, the moral law requires that every kindness
be regarded as an owed requital for the kindnesses received from
God, the benefactor retains no right to demand a reward for it on
his own behalf.

XI. To hold that lending at usury is a permissible contract of partnership is against the moral law.

Proof: It belongs to the essence of a contract of partnership that the capital of a partner included in the contract does not become the exclusive property of the other partner or partners, wherefore also profit and loss are divided among the members of the partnership in a fixed proportion. Lending at usury, by contrast, has it as belonging to its essence that the capital advanced is made over to the other as his property, and that he must therefore alone bear the loss that befalls this capital, or the goods exchanged for it — since he remains bound in conscience at all times, even after suffering loss, as debtor, to pay the creditor the full value of the original capital as soon as he is able.

XII. The moral law forbids holding usurious interest to be fair compensation for damages (interest in the strict sense).

Proof: Since what is at issue here is not a gain, but the making good of the disturbance of a legal relation — which the idea of requital demands, requiring that the damage caused fall back upon the party at fault, and that what has been brought into loss be made good, so that by right only the party at fault can be penalized — it is evident that only the party at fault, that is, he who commits a wrong (culpa), may be penalized with compensation for damages through the forfeiture of part of his estate. Under civil law, he commits no wrong and is not bound to make compensation for damages who, by an act permissible in itself and not exceeding the legal limits, harms another. The same holds when someone deprives another, by a permissible act, of a mere advantage to which he has no exclusive right. Since, then, lending is not merely a permissible act not exceeding the legal bounds, but is, in fact, no violation of right at all — the creditor making over the capital to the debtor of his own free will — it is against the moral law to demand and take compensation for the damnum emergens, that is, the temporary diminution of the creditor's estate through the lending. And since, further, lending is not