Views and Suggestions on Poorness
A statute, that should forbid one man to borrow, at any rate of interest whatever, more capital than he could manage by his own labor alone, would not be tolerated, for the reason that it would lie an infringement of men’s natural rights to borrow all they could; yet it would not be half so unequal or pernicious, nor so unjust an infringement of individual rights, nor probably so destructive of the equal distribution of wealth, as mire the usury laws, which allow one man to borrow enough to employ a hundred laborers upon, while they forbid hundred laborers to borrow each enough to employ his own hands upon.
A statute, that should forbid one man to borrow, at any rate of interest whatever, more capital than he could manage by his own labor alone, would not be tolerated, for the reason that it would lie an infringement of men’s natural rights to borrow all they could; yet it would not be half so unequal or pernicious, nor so unjust an infringement of individual rights, nor probably so destructive of the equal distribution of wealth, as mire the usury laws, which allow one man to borrow enough to employ a hundred laborers upon, while they forbid hundred laborers to borrow each enough to employ his own hands upon.
