St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-02-07
THEORY OF UsURY LAWS.


There is nothing worse for an advo-
cate than to support good cause by
poor reasoning. In the first place, a
GAUSS garb has good deal TO do with
the sort of reception it is going to get.
Men admit with reluctance into their
minds guests who come disheyeled and
in tatters. And then again, there is no
easier way for the opposition to dis
credit conclusions which are undoubt-
eddy sound than by concentrating its
attacks on the feeble arguments which
have been advanced to support them.
This demoralizes the advocate, no mat
ter how worthy his cause, and produces
a general confusion, in the midst OF
which the wrong side often gains an I'M
merited victory.
All this is a generalization which
bears on the usury lazy discussion. The
men who have appeared before the leg
islative committee and have been
writing to the newspapers against the
proposed reduction of the legal limit of
interest exactions in Minnesota are very
able and intelligent men, and there is a
great deal of good in their cause. But
they are entirely in error when they
say that the state has no right to regu-
late the price which my be asked for
money. TO compare money to potatoes.
as some of them have done, and to hold
that the law of supply and demand
should be allowed as matter of legal
right to regulate the market rates in
one case as in another, is simply OBJ
securing the real nature Of the problem
by a false analogy. Like the advocate
who supports a good cause by poor
reasoning, they have given Mr..
DoNNELLY, that most subtle of
all men, his great opportunity,
which he has not been slow to take adj
vantage of. Money is not commodity
in the sense that coats and potatoes are.
because these are forthcoming in any
quantities in response to a demand. 1t
is necessity, but its supply is limited.
The government has the legal right to
fix its price, just as it has to control any
other monopoly. Usury laws have uni
formIy been upheld by the courts. If
the discussion is permitted to concen-
trate around this point, all that Mr.. Don
NELLY has to do is to raise great dust
of elOqueDce and in the midst of it dash
under the pole an easy winner.
But the point in the debate is really
not here at all. When they asked Ed
MUND BURKE in the house of commons
whether England had not the right to
tax the colonies he said that did not
have anything to do with the matter.
The question was not whether it was
right, but whether it was eXpedient. This
is the first inquiry that every honest
statesman should make when meas
ure is presented for his consideration.
The legislator who goes about with a
ready reference book of abstract princi-
pies, with which he compares his votes,
ought to have lived in the days of the
French revolution, and is just century
behind the times. The way to tell
whether the legal rate of interest in
this state ought to be fixed at Il maxi
mum of 6 or per cent, and whether
brokers ought to be forbidden to take
commissions for their services on the
pain of heavy penalties, is to ask
would the result be good for the state.
If it would, paSs the law; if it would not.
do not pass it. In the meanwhile it will
do no harm to let the dust accumulate
on the ready reference book of abstract
political principles.