[발췌: 벤덤] Defence of Usury (1787, 1818)

출처: Jeremy Bentham. Defence of Usury. 1787 (1818).
자료: http://www.econlib.org/library/Bentham/bnthUs3.html

※ 발췌 (excerpt):


Letter XIII.

To Dr. Smith, on Projects in Arts, etc.


SIR,

1.

2.     In the series of letter to which this will form a sequel, I had travelled nearly thus far in my researches into the policy of the laws fixing the rate of interest, combating such arguments as fancy rather than observation had suggested to my view, when, on a sudden, recollection presented me with your formidable image, bestriding the ground over which I was travelling pretty much at my ease, and opposing the shield of your authority to any arguments I could produce.


3.     It was a reflection mentioned by Cicero as affording him some comfort, that the employment his talents till that time had met with, had been chiefly on the defending side. How little soever blest, on any occasion, with any portion of his eloquence, I may, on the present occasion, however, indulge myself with a portion of what constituted his comfort: for, if I presume to contend with you, it is only in defence of what I look upon as, not only an innocent, but a most meritorious race of men, who are so unfortunate as to have fallen under the rod of your displeasure. I mean projectors: under which inviduous name I understand you to comprehend, in particular, all such persons as, in the pursuit of wealth, strike out into any new channel, and more especially into any channel of invention.


4.     It is with the professed view of checking, or rather of crushing, these adventurous spirits, whom you rank with “prodigals”, that you approve of the laws which limit the rate of interest, grounding yourself on the tendency, they appear to you to have, to keep the capital of the country out of two such different sets of hands.


5.     The passage, I am speaking of, is in the fourth chapter of your second book, volume the second of the 8vo. edition of 1784. [국부론 2권 4장:]

"The legal rate" (you say) "it is to be observed, though it ought to be somewhat above, ought not to be much above, the lowest market rate. If the legal rate of interest in Great Britain for example, was fixed so high as 8 or 10 per cent.[,] the greater part of money which was to be lent, would be lent to prodigals and projectors, who alone would be willing to give this high interest. Sober people, who will give for the use of money no more than a part of what they are likely to make by the use of it, would not venture into the competition. A greater part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it. Where the legal interest, on the contrary, is fixed but a very little above the lowest market rate, sober people are universally preferred as borrowers, to prodigals and projectors. The person who lends money, gets nearly as much interest from the former, as he dares to take from the latter, and his money is much safer in the hands of the one set of people than in those of the other. A greater part of the capital of the country is thus thrown into the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage."

6.     It happens fortunately for the side you appear to have taken and as unfortunately for mine, that the appellative, which the custom of the language has authorized you, and which the poverty and perversity of the language has in a manner forced you, to make use of, is one, which, along with the idea of the sort of persons in question, conveys the idea of reprobation, as indiscriminately and deservedly applied to them. With what justice or consistency, or by the influence of what causes, this stamp of indiscriminate reprobation has been thus affixed, you and every body else, I imagine, will be ready enough to allow. This being the case, the question stands already decided, in the first instance at least, if not irrovocabley, in the judgments of all those, who unable or unwilling to be at the pains of analysing their ideas, suffer their minds to be led captive by the tyranny of sounds; that is, I doubt, of by far the greater proportion of those whom we are likely to have to judge us. In the conception of all such persons, to ask whether it be fit to restrain projects and projectors, will be as much as to ask, whether it be fit to restrain rashness, and folly, and absurdity, and knavery, and waste.


7.     Of prodigals I shall say no more at present. I have already stated my reasons for thinking, that it is not among them that we are to look for the natural customers for money at high rate of interest. As far as those reasons are conclusive, it will follow, that, of the two sorts of men you mention as proper objects of the burthen [= burden] of these restraints, prodigals and projectors, that burthen falls exclusive on the latter. As to these, what your definition is of projectors, and what descriptions of persons you meant to include under the censure conveyed by that name, might be material for the purpose of judging of the propriety of that censure, but makes no difference in judging of the propriety of the law, which that censure is employed to justify. Whether you yourself, were the several classes of persons made to pass before you in review, would be disposed to pick out this or that class, or this and that individual, in order to exempt them from such censure, is what for that purpose we have no need to enquire.

The law, it is certain, makes no such distinctions:  

• it falls with equal weight, and with all its weight, upon all those persons, without distinction to whom the term projectors, in the most unpartial and extensive signification of which it is capable, can be applied. 
• It falls at any rate (to repeat some of the words of my former definition), upon all such persons, as, {in the pursuit of wealth, or even of any other object, endeavour, by the assistance of wealth,} to strike into any channel of invention. 
• It falls upon all such persons, as, in the cultivation of any of those arts which have been by way of eminence termed useful, direct their endeavours to any of those departments in which their utility shines most conspicuous and indubitable; 
• upon all such persons as, in the line of any of their pursuits, aim at any thing that can be called improvement; whether it consist in the production of any new article adapted to man's use, or in the meliorating the quality, or diminishing the expence, of any of those which are already known to us. 
• It falls, in short, upon every application of the human powers, in which ingenuity stands in need of wealth for its assistant.

8.     High and extraordinary rates of interest, how little soever adapted to the situation of the prodigal, are certainly, as you very justly observe, particularly adapted to the situation of the projector: not however to that of the imprudent projector only, nor even to his case more than another's, but to that of the prudent and wellgrounded projector, if the existence of such a being were to be supposed. Whatever be the prudence or other qualities of the project, in whatever circumstance the novelty of it may lie, it has this circumstance against it, viz. that it is new. But the rates of interest, the highest rates allowed, are, as you expressly say they are, and as you would have them to be, adjusted to the situation which the sort of trader is in, whose trade runs in the old channels, and to the best security which such channels can afford. But in the nature of things, no new trade, no trade carried on in any new channel, can afford a security equal to that which may be afforded by a trade carried on in any of the old ones: in whatever light the matter might appear to perfect intelligence, in the eys of every prudent person, exerting the best powers of judging which the falliable condition of the human faculties affords, the novelty of any commercial adeventure will oppose a chance of ill success, superseded to evey one which could attend the same, or any other, adventure, aleady tried, and proved to be profitable by experience.

9.     The limitation of the profit that is to be made, by lending money to persons embarked in trade, will render the monied man more anxious, you may say, about the goodness of his security, and accordingly more anxious to satisfy himself respecting the prudence of a project in the carrying on of which the money is to be employed, than he would be otherwise: and in this way it may be thought that these laws ^have^ a tendency to pick out the good projects from the bad, and favour the former at the expense of the latter. ( ... ... )


10.     I should not expect to see it alleged that there is any thing, that should render the number of well-grounded projects, in comparison of the ill-grounded, less in time future, than it has been in time past. ( ... ... )


11.


12.     That I have done you no injustice, in assigning to your idea of projectors so greate a latitude, and that the unfavourable opinion you have professed to entertain of them is not confined to the above passage, might be made ( ... ) by another passage in the 10th chapter of your book. "The establishment of any new manufactue, of any new branch of commerce, or of any new practice in agriculture," all these you comprehend by the name under the list of "projects": ( ... ... )


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22.    ( ... ... ) On this subject you ride triumphant, and chastise the "impertinence and presumption of kings and ministers," with a tone of authority, which it required a courage like your's to venture upon, and a genius like your's to warrant a man to assume. After drawing the parallel between private thrift and public profusion, "It is" (you conclude) "the highest impertinence and presumption therefore in kings and ministers ^to pretend to watch over the economy of private people^, ( ... ... )


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29.     I hope you may by this time be disposed to allow me, that we have not been ill served by the projects of time past. I have already intimated, that I could not see any reason why we should apprehend our being worse served by the projects of time future. I will now venture to add, that I think I do see reason, why we should expect to be still better and better served by these projects, than by those. I mean better upon the whole, in virtue of the reduction which experience, if experience be worth anything, should make in the proportion of the number of the ill-grounded and unsuccessful, to that of the well-grounded and successful ones.

30.     The career of art, the great road which receives the footsteps of projectors, may be considered as a vast, and perhaps unbounded, plain, bestrewed with gulphs, such as Curtius was swallowed up in. Each requires an human victim to fall into it ere [= before] it can close, but when it once closes, it closes to open no more, and so much of the path is safe to those who follow. If the want of perfect information of former miscarriages renders the reality of human life less happy than this picture, still the similitude must be acknowledged: and we see at once the only plain and effectual method for bringing that similitude still nearer and nearer to perfection; I mean, the framing of the history of the projects of time past, and (what may be executed in much greater perfection were but a finger held up by the hand of government) the making provision for recording, and collecting and publishing as they are brought forth, the race of those with which the womb of futurity is still pregnant. But to pursure this idea, the execution of which is not within my competence, would lead me too far from the purpose.

( ... ... )

32.     But to return to the laws against usury, and their restraining influence on projectors.[,] I have made it, I hope, pretty apparent, that these restraints have no power or tendency to pick out bad projects from the good. Is it worthwhile to add, which I think I may do with some truth, that the tendency of them is rather to pick the good out from the bad? Thus much at least may be said, and it comes to the same thing, that there is one case in which, be the project what it may, they may have the effect of checking it, and another in which they can have no such effect, and that the first has for its accomplishment, and that a necessary one, a circumstance which has a strong tendency to separate and discard every project of the injudicious stamp, but which is wanting in the other case. I mean, in a word, the benefit of discussion.


33.     It is evident enough, that upon all such projects, whatever be their nature, as find funds sufficient to carry them on, in the hands of him whose invention gave them birth, these laws are perfectly, and if by this time you will allow me to say so, very happily, without power. But for these there has not necessarily been any other judge, prior to experience, than the inventor's own partial affection. It is not only not necessary that they should have had, but it is natural enough that they should not have had, any such judge: since in most cases the advantage to be expected from the project depends upon the exclusive property in it, and consequently upon the concealment of the principle. Think, on the other hand, how different is the lot of that enterprize which depends upon the good opinion of another man, that other, a man possessed of the wealth which the projector wants, and before whom necessity forces him to apear in the chapter of a suppliant at least: happy if, in the imagination of his judge, he adds not to that degrading character, that of a visionary enthusiast or an imposter! At any rate, there are, in this case, two wits, set to sift into the merits of the project, for one, which was employed upon that same task in the other case: and of these two there is one, whose prejudices are certainly not most likely to be on the favorable side. True it is, that in the jumble of occurrences, an over-sanguine as himself; and the wishes may bribe the judgment of the one, as they did of the other. The opposite case, however, you will allow, I think, to be by much the more natural. Whatever a man's wishes may be for the success of an enterprize not yet his own, his fears are likely to be still stronger. That same pretty generally implanted principle of vanity and self-conceit, which disposes most of us to over-value each of us his own conceptions, disposes us, in a proportinable degree, to undervalue those of other men.

( ... ... )