Holy See, allowing the faithful to take moderate interest under condition that any future decisions of the Pope should he implicitly obeyed. Social science as applied to political economy had gained a victory final and complete. The Torlonia family at Rome to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affiliations, and papal favor—all won by lending money at interest and by devotion to the Roman See—is but one out of many growths of its kind on ramparts long since surrendered and deserted.[1]
The dealings of theology with public economy were by no means confined to the taking of interest for money. It would be interesting to note the restrictions placed upon commerce by the Church prohibition of commercial intercourse with infidels, against which the Republic of Venice fought a good fight; to note how, by a most curious perversion of Scripture in the Greek Church, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented from raising and eating potatoes; how, in Scotland, at the beginning of this century, the use of fanning-mills for winnowing grain was widely denounced as contrary to the text, "The wind bloweth where it listeth," etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is "prince of the powers of the air," and therefore as sufficient cause for excommunication from the Scotch Church. Instructive it would be also to note how the introduction of railways was declared by an archbishop of the French Church to be an evidence of the divine displeasure against country innkeepers who set meat before their guests on fast-days, and who were now punished by seeing travelers carried by their doors; how railways and telegraphs were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of Antichrist; and how in Protestant England the curate of Rotherhithe, at the breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declared it from his pulpit a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man.
The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men to the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States,
- ↑ For the decree forbidding confessors to trouble lenders of money at legal interest, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, as above; also Mastrofini, as above, in the appendix, where various other recent Roman decrees are given. As to the controversy generally, see Mastrofini; also La Replique des douze Docteurs, cited by Guillaumin and Coquelin; also Reusch, vol. ii, p. 850. As an example of Mastrofini's way of making black appear white, compare the Latin text of the decree on p. 97 with his statements regarding it; see also his cunning substitution of the new significance of the word usury for the old in various parts of his work. A good historical presentation of the general subject will be found in Roscher, Geschichte der National-Oeconomie in Deutschland, München, 1874, under articles Wucher and Zinsnehmen. For France, see especially Petit, Traité de l'Usure, Paris, 1840; and for Germany see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865. For the view of a modern leader of thought in this field, see Jeremy Bentham, Defense of Usury, Letter X.
