lower price.” Escobar found a way to justify this kind of usury. Pascal and all the Jansenists laughed at him. But what would the satirical Pascal, the learned Nicole, and the invincible Arnaud have said, if Father Antoine Escobar de Valladolid had answered them thus: “A lease is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra, and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you proscribe both interest and rent at one blow”?
In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted that society was in peril,—that the Jesuits were sapping its very foundations.
We rob,—14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his legitimate salary.
Everybody knows the definition of commerce—The art of buying for three francs that which is worth six, and of selling for six that which is worth three. Between commerce thus defined and vol à l’américaine, the only difference is in the relative proportion of the values exchanged,—in short, in the amount of the profit.
We rob,—15. By making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures, and by exacting exorbitant wages.
The farmer, who sells a certain amount of corn to the consumer, and who during the measurement thrusts his hand into the bushel and takes out a handful of grains, robs; the professor, whose lectures are paid for by the State, and who
