# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1864_S258
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

258 Martin Chemnitz on Usury.

of the loss or of the gain foregone) is to be understood and judged
according to the rule of equalizing justice and of love. Concerning this
question many lengthy disputations are carried on, and various pretexts
of usury are invented in the process. I hold, however, that the grounds
of decision consist in the following rules: 1. Interest is not to be
judged with respect to the debtor — how much he either gains or avoids
losing through the use of the borrowed money, for the obligation of
lending may not be sold — but with respect to the creditor, if the
latter has for that reason suffered a loss. For natural equity says that
whoever actually causes loss to another owes him compensation. And
indeed it would be unjust to cause a real loss, without compensation, to
one who has rendered the service of lending for nothing. But it is
evident that compensation for loss is not usury. 2. The creditor may not
make a business transaction out of interest and seek to enrich himself
by it; interest is rather to have only the purpose that the creditor be
kept free of loss. From this it can easily be judged when interest is a
pretext for usury. 3. Interest must be grounded on causes that are
really present and immediate, so that the loss has actually occurred.
For if one takes as causes things that lie at a distance and are not
connected with the lending, this becomes a pretext for usury. 4. The
debtor must hold fast to the rule that he may not seek to enrich himself
at the expense of him from whom he received the free benefit of the
loan. From this it can also be judged why the jurists recognize no right
of action with respect to interest except after default of repayment
beyond the fixed term. The scholastics, however, dispute whether, in the
case of a true interest, one is obliged to compensation for loss even
within the term of payment, before default. From these rules much can be
understood and judged; as, when a covetous man lends and pretends that
it might happen that in the meantime a loss should arise for him and a
gain be foregone, and already at the time of lending stipulates by
contract that something above the capital be paid him under the name of
double interest, it is evident that this is not a true but a pretended
interest, a usurious pretext. As for the interest arising from loss, the
nature of it is subject to no doubt and is evident; but the interest of
gain foregone has darker hiding places in which usurers conceal
themselves. Yet rules are taught that are not useless, which show when
this interest of gain foregone