Defence of Usury

By Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham’s clever application of applied economics,
Defence of Usury, Shewing the Impolity of the Present Legal Restraints on the Terms of Pecuniary Bargains in a Series of Letters to a Friend. To Which is Added a Letter to Adam Smith, Esq; LL.D. on the Discouragements opposed by the above Restraints to the Progress of Inventive Industry was first written while Bentham was visiting Russia in 1787. (“Impolity” was changed to “Impolicy” in a later edition.)The book was an immediate success, and a total of four editions were published in Bentham’s lifetime (1748-1832).In this work, Bentham accomplishes two things. First, in an orderly manner replete with concrete examples he covers every possible objection to the regulation of
usury (charging of interest rates that are apparently above the market rate), from religious restrictions that tainted the connotation of the word, to the economics of risk premiums. Second, throughout the work he champions those who are marginalized by society. He tears apart anti-Jewish bigotry. He argues strongly for the rights of the poor and even the feeble-minded to make their own choices in life. His emphasis on the ability of individuals to be the best judges of their own particular circumstances, and their right to use their own best methods for the pursuit of happiness, became the basis of modern utility theory.Bentham’s ability to entertain his readers is well-illustrated in his classic horse-trading satire in
Letter IX. Here, he uses the words of Sir William Blackstone (renowned jurist, whose works later became the basis of legal education throughout England and the United States) to highlight Blackstone’s own inconsistencies. Bentham’s sentence structures often seem ornate and overly-complex today. Yet, these very ornaments enabled him to spoof and poke at the foolish ideas of legislators and judges while maintaining decorum, delivering what we would today call “zingers”.The editions differ little, and the 4th edition (1818) is reproduced here with only minor typographical corrections.Bentham wrote, but decided against publishing, a tentative Preface to the second edition and a tentative “Postscript”, covering tangential material he’d been led to think about. He also penned a subsequent letter to Adam Smith (beyond the hypothetical letter in the book proper), of which there is a surviving draft, hoping for Smith’s concurrence with his intellectual critiques. (The critiques addressed the effects of a government attempting to
lower interest rates below the market rate, and the influence of “projectors”. [In today’s language, “inventors”.]) Smith (1723-1790), who died shortly after receiving Bentham’s plea, acknowledged the letter by sending a dedicated copy of his book, but never conceded the points to Bentham. The interested reader can find these items of Bentham’s transcribed and published in
Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings, by W. Stark (London: The Royal Economic Society, 1952, vol. 1, pp.191-207). Mr. Stark observes the extensiveness and disarray of Bentham’s many surviving boxes of handwritten notes, and includes in his introduction a thorough discussion of these additional, previously unknown, materials.Note, to give historical and scientific perspective to the difficulty of assessing inventions, research, and lending for those purposes, that at the time of the publication of Smith’s 1776 and Bentham’s 1787 work, and Bentham’s brief actual correspondence with Smith (1790), there would have been enormous difficulty for a lending/investing “venture capitalist” to distinguish between credible scientific inventions and such skeptically-held but still ambiguous fields even such as alchemy! Alfred Jenner’s smallpox vaccine was released only a decade later (in 1796, after inspiring Jenner’s attention after an English epidemic in 1788). Eli Whitney’s (1765-1825) cotton gin was patented only in 1794, and his drawings on it not even begun till 1792. Foucault’s pendulum was set up in Paris only in 1852. Mendeleev’s periodic table was not published until 1869. Marie Curie (1867-1934) was hired by the Sorbonne only in 1906, after having won her first Nobel Prize in 1903. But, wild, though collapsed, speculations about the potential financial gains from discoveries (the
Mississippi Land Scheme and the
South Sea Bubble of the 1720s), were rife in the mid-1700s. On a successful scientific front, though, the planet Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781, re-exciting an interest in astrophysics that had been rejuvenated by Newton (1643-1727). Thus, Bentham—and Smith—wrote at a time when the discovery of the physical world and its financial potential was fraught with attention and hope, but yet not concrete enough to sort out with conviction.Lauren F. Landsburg

Editor, Library of Economics and Liberty

July, 2001

Book Cover

First Pub. Date

1787

Publisher

London: Payne and Foss

Pub. Date

1818

Comments

4th edition. First edition used spelling of 'Impolity' in subtitle.

Copyright

The text of this edition is in the public domain. Picture of Jeremy Bentham courtesy of The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.

Reasons for Restraint.—Protection of Simplicity.

LETTER V.

I come, lastly, to the case of the simple. Here, in the first place, I think I am by this time entitled to observe, that no simplicity, short of absolute idiotism, can cause the individual to make a more groundless judgment, than the legislator, who, in the circumstances above stated, should pretend to confine him to any given rate of interest, would have made for him.

Another consideration, equally conclusive, is, that were the legislator’s judgment ever so much superior to the individual’s, how weak soever that may be, the exertion of it on this occasion can never be any otherwise than useless, so long as there are so many similar occasions, as there ever must be, where the simplicity of the individual is equally likely to make him a sufferer, and on which the legislator cannot interpose with effect, nor has ever so much as thought of interposing.

Buying goods with money, or upon credit, is the business of every day: borrowing money is the business, only, of some particular exigency, which, in comparison, can occur but seldom. Regulating the prices of goods in general would be an endless task, and no legislator has ever been weak enough to think of attempting it. And supposing he were to regulate the prices, what would that signify for the protection of simplicity, unless he were to regulate also the quantum of what each man should buy? Such quantum is indeed regulated, or rather means are taken to prevent buying altogether; but in what cases? In those only where the weakness is adjudged to have arrived at such a pitch, as to render a man utterly unqualified for the management of his affairs: in short, when it has arrived at the length of idiocy.

But in what degree soever a man’s weakness may expose him to imposition, he stands much more exposed to it, in the way of buying goods, than in the way of borrowing money. To be informed, beforehand, of the ordinary prices of all the sorts of things, a man may have occasion to buy, may be a task of considerable variety and extent. To be informed of the ordinary rate of interest, is to be informed of one single fact, too interesting not to have attracted attention, and too simple to have escaped the memory. A few per cent. enhancement upon the price of goods, is a matter that may easily enough pass unheeded; but a single per cent. beyond the ordinary interest of money, is a stride more conspicuous and startling, than many per cent. upon the price of any kind of goods.

Even in regard to subjects, which, by their importance would, if any, justify a regulation of their price, such as for instance land, I question whether there ever was an instance where, without some such ground as, on the one side fraud, or suppression of facts necessary to form a judgment of the value, or at least ignorance of such facts, on the other, a bargain was rescinded, merely because a man had sold too cheap, or bought too dear. Were I to take a fancy to give a hundred years purchase instead of thirty, for a piece of land, rather than not have it, I don’t think there is any court in England, or indeed any where else, that would interpose to hinder me, much less to punish the seller with the loss of three times the purchase money, as in the case of usury. Yet when I had got my piece of land, and paid my money, repentance, were the law ever so well disposed to assist me, might be unavailing: for the seller might have spent the money, or gone off with it. But, in the case of borrowing money, it is the borrower always, who, according to the indefinite, or short term for which money is lent, is on the safe side: any imprudence he may have committed with regard to the rate of interest, may be corrected at any time: if I find I have given too high an interest to one man, I have no more to do than to borrow of another at a lower rate, and pay off the first: if I cannot find any body to lend me at a lower, there cannot be a more certain proof that the first was not in reality too high. But of this hereafter.

Categories: Jeremy Bentham