for seven years, viz. 175l., makes, at the end of that seven years, 6751. In the other case, paying 6 per cent. on the 15007., that is 901. a year, and receiving all that time the rent of the land, viz. 1007., he would have had, at the seven years' end, the amount of the remaining 107. during that period, that is 707., in addition to his 1000l.; 675l. subtracted from 10707. leaves 3957. This 3951., then, is what he loses out of 10707., almost 37 per cent. of his capital, by the loving-kindness of the law. Make the calculations, and you will find that by preventing him from borrowing the money at 6 per cent. interest, it makes him nearly as much a sufferer as if he had borrowed it at ten.

What I have said hitherto is confined to the case of those who have present value to give, for the money they stand in need of. If they have no such value, then, if they succeed in purchasing assistance upon any terms, it must be in breach of the law; their lenders exposing themselves to its vengeance; for I speak not here of the accidental case of its being so constructed as to be liable to evasion. But even in this case, the mischievous influence of the law still pursues them; aggravating the very mischief it pretends to remedy. Though it be inefficacious in the way in which the legislator wishes to see it efficacious, it is efficacious in the way opposite to that in which he would wish to see it so. The effect of it is, to raise the rate of interest higher than it would be otherwise, and that in two ways. In the first place, a man must, in common prudence, as Dr. Smith observes, make a point of being indemnified, not only for whatsoever extraordinary risk it is that he runs, independently of the law, but for the very risk occasioned by the law he must be insured, as it were, against the law. This cause would operate, were there even as many persons ready to lend upon the illegal rate, as upon the legal. But this is not the case: a great number of persons are, of course, driven out of this competition by the danger of the business, and another great number by the disrepute which, under cover of these prohibitory laws or otherwise, has fastened itself upon the name of usurer. So many persons, therefore, being driven out of the trade, it happens in this branch, as it must necessarily in every other, that those who remain have the less to withhold them from advancing their terms; and without confederating (for it must be allowed that confederacy in such a case is plainly impossible) each one will find it easier to push his

advantage up to any given degree of exorbitancy, than he would, if there were a greater number of persons of the same stamp to resort to.

As to the case where the law is so worded as to be liable to be evaded, in this case it is partly inefficacious and nugatory, and partly mischievous. It is nugatory as to all such whose confidence of its being so is perfect: it is mischievous, as before, in regard to all such who fail of possessing that perfect confidence. If the borrower can find nobody at all who has confidence enough to take advantage of the flaw, he stands precluded from all assistance, as before: and though he should, yet the lender's terms must necessarily run the higher, in proportion to what his confidence wants of being perfect. It is not likely that it should be perfect: it is still less likely that he should acknowledge it so to be: it is not likely, at least as matters stand in England, that the worst penned law made for this purpose should be altogether destitute of effect and while it has any, that effect, we see, must be in one way or other mischievous.

I have already hinted at the disrepute, the ignominy, the reproach, which prejudice, the cause and the effect of these restrictive laws, has heaped upon that perfectly innocent and even meritorious class of men, who, not more for their own advantage than to the relief of the distresses of their neighbor, may have ventured to break through these restraints. It is certainly not a matter of indifference, that a class of persons, who, in every point of view in which their conduct can be placed, whether in relation to their own interest or in relation to that of the persons whom they have to deal with, as well on the score of prudence as on that of beneficence, (and of what use is even benevolence, but in as far as it is productive of beneficence ?) deserve praise rather than censure, should be classed with the abandoned and profligate, and loaded with a degree of infamy which is due to those only whose conduct is in its tendency the most opposite to their own.

"This suffering," it may be said, "having already been taken account of, is not to be brought to account a second time: they are aware, as you yourself observe, of this inconvenience, and have taken care to get such amends for it, as they themselves look upon as sufficient." True: but is it sure that the compensation, such as it is, will always, in the event, have proved a sufficient one? Is there no room here for miscalculation? May there not be unexpected, unlooked-for incidents,

sufficient to turn into bitterness the utmost satisfaction which the difference of pecuniary emolument could afford? For who can see to the end of that inexhaustible train of consequences that are liable to ensue from the loss of reputation? who can fathom the abyss of infamy? At any rate, this article of mischief, if not an addition in its quantity to the others above noticed, is at least distinct from them in its nature, and as such ought not to be overlooked.

Nor is the event of the execution of the law by any means an unexampled one: several such, at different times, have fallen within my notice. Then comes absolute perdition: loss of character, and forfeiture, not of three times the extra interest, which formed the profit of the offense, but of three times the principal, which gave occasion to it.

The last article I have to mention in the account of mischief, is, the corruptive influence exercised by these laws on the morals of the people, by the pains they take, and cannot but take, to give birth to treachery and ingratitude. To purchase a possibility of being enforced, the law neither has found, nor, what is very material, must it ever hope to find, in this case, any other expedient, than that of hiring a man to break his engagement, and to crush the hand that has been reached out to help him. In the case of informers in general, there has been no troth plighted, nor benefit received. In the case of real criminals invited by rewards to inform against accomplices, it is by such breach of faith that society is held together, as in other cases by the observance of it. In the case of real crimes, in proportion as their mischievousness is apparent, what cannot but be manifest even to the criminal is, that it is by the adherence to his engagement that he would do an injury to society, and that, by the breach of such engagement, instead of doing mischief he is doing good: in the case of usury this is what no man can know, and what one can scarcely think it possible for any man, who in the character of the borrower has been concerned in such a transaction, to imagine. He knew that, even in his own judgment, the engagement was a beneficial one to himself, or he would not have entered into it: and nobody else but the lender is affected by it.

KANT AND SPINOZA ON PRINCIPLES OF MORAL ACTION.

[IMMANUEL KANT was born at Königsberg, Prussia, educated at its University, and spent his life in the city, as tutor, librarian, and finally professor. He published a cosmic theory (1755), a treatise "On the Beautiful and the Sublime" (1764), and other works; but his first epoch-making work was the "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781), followed by the "Critique of Practical Reason" (1788), and the "Critique of the Power of Judgment" (1790). His "Metaphysic of Ethics" appeared in 1785, and works on the metaphysics of religion in 1793 and of legal science in 1797.]

[BARUCH (in Latin, Benedictus) SPINOZA was born in Amsterdam, of Spanish Jew emigrants; excommunicated as a heretic by them in 1656, and narrowly escaping murder, he made his living thereafter by grinding lenses. He lived afterward near Leyden and at The Hague, where he died. He wrote in 1670 a "Theologico-Political Tractate," to demonstrate the necessity of free thought and speech in a community; but his chief work, perhaps the greatest metaphysical effort of the world, was the posthumously published "Ethics demonstrated in the Geometrical Order," based on the principles of Descartes, and setting forth the theory that mind and matter are only different manifestations of God.]

[Though these two, ranking among the world's few greatest metaphysicians, represent different metaphysical stages, -Spinoza, 1632-1677, preceding Leibnitz, and Kant, 1724-1804, following him, and both the latter greatly influenced by a desire to avoid Spinoza's pantheistic conclusions, - we present their ethical principles together for comparison.]

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF

MORALS.

BY KANT.

WHAT is it that justifies virtue, or the morally good disposition, in making such lofty claims? It is nothing less than the privilege it secures to the rational being of participating in the giving of universal laws, by which it qualifies him to be a member of a possible kingdom of ends: a privilege to which he was already destined by his own nature as being an end in himself, and on that account legislating in the kingdom of ends; free as regards all laws of physical nature and obeying those only which he himself gives, and by which his maxims can belong to a system of universal law, to which at the same time he submits himself. For nothing has any worth except what the law assigns it. Now the legislation itself which assigns the worth of everything, must for that very reason possess dignity, that is, an unconditional, incomparable worth; and the word respect alone supplies a becoming expression for

the esteem which a rational being must have for it.

Autonomy

then is the basis of the dignity in human and of every rational nature. . .

All maxims have

1. A form consisting in universality; and in this view the formula of the moral imperative is expressed thus, — that the maxims must be so chosen as if they were to serve as universal laws of nature.

2. A matter, namely an end; and here the formula says that the rational being, as it is an end by its own nature and therefore an end in itself, must in every maxim serve as the condition limiting all merely relative and arbitrary ends.

3. A complete determination of all maxims by this formula; namely, that all maxims ought by their own legislation to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends as with a kingdom of nature. There is a progress here in the order of the categories of unity of the form of the will (its universality), plurality of the matter (the objects, i.e. the ends), and totality of the system of these. In forming our moral judgment of actions it is better to proceed always on the strict method, and start from the general formula of the categorical imperative Act according to a maxim which can at the same time make itself a universal law. If, however, we wish to gain an entrance for the moral law, it is very useful to bring one and the same action under the three specified conceptions, and thereby as far as possible to bring it nearer to intuition.

We can now end where we started at the beginning; namely, with the conception of a will unconditionally good. That will is absolutely good which cannot be evil; in other words, whose maxim, if made a universal law, could never contradict itself. This principle, then, is its supreme law: Act always on such a maxim as thou canst at the same time will to be a universal law; this is the sole condition under which a will can never contradict itself; and such an imperative is categorical. Since the validity of the will as a universal law for possible actions is analogous to the universal connection of the existence of things by general laws, which is the formal notion of nature in general, the categorical imperative can also be expressed thus: Act on maxims which can at the same time have for their object themselves as universal laws of nature. Such then is the formula of an absolutely good will.

Rational nature is distinguished from the rest of nature by