very extended
and elastic interpretation, and would justify increased commercial
profits according as the standard of life improved. The other motive
given by the theologians, namely, the benefit of the State, was also
one which was capable of a very wide construction. One must remember
that even the manual labourer was bound not to labour solely for
avaricious gain, but also for the benefit of his fellow-men. 'It is
not only to chastise our bodies,' says Basil, 'it is also by the love
of our neighbour that the labourer's life is useful so that God may
furnish through us our weaker brethren';[3] and a fifteenth-century
book on morality says: 'Man should labour for the honour of God.
He should labour in order to gain for himself and his family the
necessaries of life and what will contribute to Christian joy, and
moreover to assist the poor and the sick by his labours. He who acting
otherwise seeks only the pecuniary recompense of his work does ill,
and his labours are but usury. In the words of St. Augustine, "thou
shalt not commit usury with the work of thy hands, for thus wilt thou
lose thy soul,"'[4] The necessity for altruism and regard for the
needs of one's neighbour as well as of one's self were therefore
motives necessary to justify labour as well as commerce; and it would
be wrong to conclude that the teaching of the scholastics on the
necessity for a good motive to justify trade operated to damp
individual enterprise, or to discourage those who were inclined to
launch commercial undertakings, any more than the insistence on the
need for a similar motive in labourers was productive of idleness.
What the mediaeval teaching on commerce really amounted to was that,
while commerce was as legitimate as any other occupation, owing to the
numerous temptations to avarice and dishonesty which it involved, it
must be carefully scrutinised and kept within due bounds. It was more
difficult to insure the observance of the just price in the case of
a sale by a merchant than in one by an artificer; and the power which
the merchant possessed of raising the price of the necessaries of life
on the poor by engrossing and speculation rendered him a person whose
operations should be carefully controlled.

[Footnote 1: Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_,
vol. i. p. 255.]

[Footnote 2: P. 255.]

[Footnote 3: _Reg. Fus. Tract._, XXXVII. i.]

[Footnote 4: Quoted in Janssen, _op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 9.]

Finally