avoided or forsaken by every man who
means to be honest.

Among the many mooted cases in which the question of honesty is involved,
our proposed limits will permit us to consider only that of usury(14)
(so-called). There can be no doubt that usury laws and the opinion that
sustains them sprang from the false theory, according to which money was
regarded, not as value, but merely as the measure of value. It is now
understood that it owes its capacity to measure value solely to its own
intrinsic value; that its paper representatives can equal it in purchasing
power only when convertible at pleasure into coin; and that paper not
immediately convertible can obtain the character of money only so far as
there is promise or hope of its ultimate conversion into coin. It follows
that money stands on the same footing with all other values,--that its use,
therefore, is a marketable commodity, varying indefinitely in its fitting
price, according as money is abundant or scarce, the loan for a long or a
short period, and the borrower of more or less certain solvency. For
ordinary loans the relations of supply and demand are amply competent to
regulate the rate of interest, while he who incurs an extra-hazardous risk
fairly earns a correspondingly high rate of compensation. There is,
therefore, no intrinsic wrong in one's obtaining for the use of his money
all that it is worth; and while we cannot justify the violation of any
laws not absolutely immoral, dishonesty forms no part of the offence of
the man who takes more than legal interest.(15)

Section V.

Beneficence.

*We have a distinct consciousness of the needs of human beings.* If we
have not suffered destitution in our own persons, we yet should deprecate
it. What we should dread others feel. The things which we find or deem
essential to our well-being, many lack. We, it may be, possess them or the
means of procuring them, beyond our power of personal use. This larger
share of material goods has come to us, indeed, honestly, by the operation
of laws inherent in the structure of society, and thus, as we believe, by
Divine appointment. At the same time we are conscious, in a greater or
less degree, of the benevolent affections. We are moved to pity by the
sight or knowledge of want or suffering. Our sense of fitness is painfully
disturbed by the existence of needs unsupplied, of calamities unrelieved.
We cannot but be aware of the adap