e years. Now, a
difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not
alter the nature of the transaction. As for the capitalists who invest
their money, either with the State or in commercial operations, at
three, four, and five per cent.,--that is, who lend on usury at a
little lower rate than the bankers and usurers,--they are the flower of
society, the cream of honesty! Moderation in robbery is the height of
virtue! [28]

But what, then, is usury? Nothing is more amusing than to see these
INSTRUCTORS OF NATIONS hesitate between the authority of the Gospel,
which, they say, NEVER CAN HAVE SPOKEN IN VAIN, and the authority of
economical demonstrations. Nothing, to my mind, is more creditable
to the Gospel than this old infidelity of its pretended teachers.
Salmasius, having assimilated interest to rent, was REFUTED by Grotius,
Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Wolf, and Heineccius; and, what is more curious
still, Salmasius ADMITTED HIS ERROR. Instead of inferring from this
doctrine of Salmasius that all increase is illegitimate, and proceeding
straight on to the demonstration of Gospel equality, they arrived at
just the opposite conclusion; namely, that since everybody acknowledges
that rent is permissible, if we allow that interest does not differ
from rent, there is nothing left which can be called usury, and,
consequently, that the commandment of Jesus Christ is an ILLUSION, and
amounts to NOTHING, which is an impious conclusion.

If this memoir had appeared in the time of Bossuet, that great
theologian would have PROVED by scripture, the fathers, traditions,
councils, and popes, that property exists by Divine right, while usury
is an invention of the devil; and the heretical work would have been
burned, and the author imprisoned.

We rob,--13. By farm-rent, house-rent, and leases of all kinds.

The author of the "Provincial Letters" entertained the honest Christians
of the seventeenth century at the expense of Escobar, the Jesuit,
and the contract Mohatra. "The contract Mohatra," said Escobar, "is a
contract by which goods are bought, at a high price and on credit, to
be again sold at the same moment to the same person, cash down, and at a
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 t