Chap.xliv] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 527 of the people. It was revived by their wants and idleness, tolerated by the discretion of the praetors, and finally determined by the Code of Justinian. Persons of illustrious rank were confined to the moderate profit of four per cent. ; six was pro- nounced to be the ordinary and legal standard of interest; eight was allowed for the convenience of manufacturers and merchants; twelve was granted to nautical insurance, which the wiser ancients had not attempted to define; but, except in this perilous adventure, the practice of exorbitant usury was severely restrained. 170 The most simple interest was condemned by the clergy of the East and West ; m but the sense of mutual benefit, which had triumphed over the laws of the republic, has resisted with equal firmness the decrees of the church and even the prejudices of mankind. 172 3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repair- injuries ing an injury ; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a personal right and a legitimate action. If the property of another be entrusted to our care, the requisite degree of care may rise and fall according to the benefit which we derive from such temporary possession ; we are seldom made responsible for inevitable accident, but the consequences of a voluntary fault must always be imputed to the author. 173 A Eoman pursued and recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft ; they might pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing less than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his original claim. They were restored by the sen- tence of the praetor, and the injury was compensated by double, or threefold, or even quadruple damages, as the deed had been and more virtuous patricians might sacrifice their avarice to their ambition, and might attempt to check the odious practice by such interest as no lender would accept, and such penalties as no debtor would incur. 170 Justinian has not condescended to give usury a place in his Institutes ; but the necessary rules and restrictions are inserted in the Pandects (1. xxii. tit. i. ii.), and the Code (1. iv. tit. xxxii. xxxiii.). 171 The fathers are unanimous (Barbeyrac, Morale des Peres, p. 144, &c.) : Cyprian, Lactantius, Basil, Chrysostom (see his frivolous arguments in Noodt, 1. i. c. 7, p. 188), Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Jerom, Augustin, and a host of councils and casuists. 172 Cato, Seneca, Plutarch, have loudly condemned the practice or abuse of usury. According to the etymology of fmnus and tokos, the principle is supposed to generate the interest : a breed of barren metal, exclaims Shakspeare — and the stage is the echo of the public voice. [Cp. Aristotle, Politics, i. 10 ad fin.] 173 Sir William Jones has given an ingenious and rational Essay on the law of Bailment (London, 1781, p. 127, in 8vo). He is perhaps the only lawyer equally conversant with the year-books of Westminster, the commentaries of Ulpian, the Attic pleadings of Isebus, and the sentences of Arabian and Persian cadhis.
