rs were the customary term, and no solid or costly improvements could
be expected from a farmer who at each moment might be ejected by the
sale of the estate. Usury, the inveterate grievance of the city, had
been discouraged by the _Twelve Tables_, and abolished by the clamors of
the people. It was revived by their wants and idleness, tolerated by the
discretion of the praetors, and finally determined by the _Code_ of
Justinian. Persons of illustrious rank were confined to the moderate
profit of 4 per cent. 6 was pronounced to be the ordinary and legal
standard of interest; 8 was allowed for the convenience of manufacturers
and merchants; 12 was granted to nautical insurance, which the wiser
ancients had not attempted to define; but, except in this perilous
adventure, the practice of exorbitant usury was severely restrained.[33]
The most simple interest was condemned by the clergy of the East and
West; but the sense of mutual benefit, which had triumphed over the laws
of the republic, had resisted with equal firmness the decrees of the
Church, and even the prejudices of mankind.[34]

3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repairing an
injury; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a personal right
and a legitimate action. If the property of another be intrusted to our
care, the requisite degree of care may rise and fall according to the
benefit which we derive from such temporary possession; we are seldom
made responsible for inevitable accident, but the consequences of a
voluntary fault must always be imputed to the author. A Roman pursued
and recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft; they might
pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing less
than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his original claim.
They were restored by the sentence of the praetor, and the injury was
compensated by double, or threefold, or even quadruple damages, as the
deed had been perpetrated by secret fraud or open rapine, as the robber
had been surprised in the fact or detected by a subsequent research. The
Aquilian law defended the living property of a citizen, his slaves and
cattle, from the stroke of malice or negligence: the highest price was
allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic animal at any moment of
the year preceding his death; a similar latitude of thirty days was
granted on the destruction of any other valuable effects. A personal
injury is blunted or sha