# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S334
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

334 Fifteen Theses on Usury.

merely a permissible act, but also takes place with the lender's
consent, and since, moreover, justice and equity forbid demanding,
as requital for the forfeiture of a merely probable gain, not the
same thing, but rather the forfeiture of an actual gain, or of a part
of the neighbor's estate, it is likewise against the moral law to
demand usurious interest as compensation for the damnum lucri
cessantis, that is, the forfeiture of a permissible probable gain. If,
however, a real loss to the creditor is bound up with the enforced
forfeiture of the capital, which loss would be a wrongful one, then
the debtor is in this case obligated under the moral law to indemnify
the lender by way of compensation.

XIII. The moral law forbids regarding usurious interest as a fair display of the debtor's gratitude.

Proof: Since, first, thanks can be owed only to a disposition, and the disposition in question — since the creditor, for his lending, desires something of the debtor's goods for himself — is not one to which thanks may be owed, it is evident that it is contrary to the truth to regard stipulated interest as a display of the debtor's gratitude. Since, further, only a disposition can give thanks, and the worth and requiting power of a disposition do not depend on whether one makes use of the offering of interest as an expression of that disposition or not; and since, further, a thankful disposition strives to requite like with like, so that in this case, with a benevolent loan made without self-interest, only the same thing may ever be expected from it — the expectation of interest arising from the debtor's grateful disposition can have its ground only in the usurious disposition of the creditor, which is not worthy of thanks.

XIV. The moral law forbids justifying lending at usury by appeal to the permitted so-called usury of necessity.

Proof: It belongs to the essence of the usury of necessity, first, that the forfeiture of the capital is a forfeiture of the creditor's necessary subsistence, for which compensation for damages would have to be demanded by just requital; second, that such a forfeiture takes place out of mercy toward the creditor, in order to protect his capital from total consumption, and that the compensation is a support of the creditor which is, on the debtor's part, fair, yet at the same time commanded by love — since in this case for the creditor to desire something of the debtor's goods is no sinful desire. Lending at usury, by contrast, has it as belonging to its essence that the interest is by right something be-