Usury Laws, Their Nature, Expediency, and Influence: Opinions of Jeremy Bentham and John Calvin, With Review of the Existing Situation and Recent ... David a Wells, and Others (Classic Reprint)

In no one department of economic science in the United States is there more of old, blind, unreasoning prejudice, more of opposition to the progress of liberal ideas, and more of ignorance of the worlds experience, than in respect to the so-called usury laws, Nearly all of the leading nations of Europe have, as the result of centuries of experience, abolished them. Fourteen of the present (1881) forty-seven states and territories of the Federal Union have wiped them off their statute books. And in no instance has any permanent bad effect been proved to have followed their repeal; neither has any state which has for any reasonable period tried the two systems of restriction or freedom in respect to contracts for the loan of capital been known to go back to the policy of restriction. Notwithstanding this record of experience, great states like New York, Virginia, and Oregon retain upon their statute books laws which they cannot enforce for the regulation of the loan of capital, which are patterned after the legislation of the dark ages, and obstinately resist any attempt to amend or repeal them. The Executive Committee of the Society for Political Education are of the opinion, therefore, that they can render no better service to the cause of economic truth and to their members, than by presenting in a compact and readable form, the leading facts and arguments bearing on the liberal side of this question. They accordingly offer in this, the fourth tract of their series of economic publications, ist. The substance of the famous series of letters written by Jeremy Bentham of England, in 1787, in defence of usury, and which after the lapse of nearly a century since their first publication, are still acknowledged to be unsurpassed for their clearness and cogency of argument.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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