George O'Brien

“ Aquinas, who, as we have seen, recognised the necessity of commerce, did not condemn all trade indiscriminately, as the Fathers had done, but made the motive with which commerce was carried on the test of its legitimacy: 'Trade is justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit, and tends to infinity. Hence trading, considered in itself, has a certain debasement attaching thereto, in so far as, by its very nature, it does not imply a virtuous or necessary end. ”

“ Again, the quality of a thing that comes into human use is measured by the price given for it, for which purpose money was invented. Therefore, if either the price exceed the quantity of the thing's worth, or conversely the worth of the thing exceed the price, there is no longer the equality of justice; and consequently to sell a thing for more than its worth, or to buy it for less than its worth, is in itself unjust and unlawful.' [2] When two contracting parties make an exchange through the medium of money, the price is the expression of the exchange value in money. ”

“ Thus Gerson says that 'the civil law, when it tolerates usury in some cases, must not be said to be always contrary to the law of God or the Church. The civil legislator, acting in the manner of a wise doctor, tolerates lesser evils that greater ones may be avoided. It is obviously less of an evil that slight usury should be permitted for the relief of want, than that men should be driven by their want to rob or steal, or to sell their goods at an unfairly low price.' [4] Buridan explains that the attitude of the State towards usury must never be more than one of toleration ”

“ The Middle Ages were therefore a period when the production of wealth was looked upon as a salutary and honourable vocation. The wonderful artistic monuments of that era, which have survived the intervening centuries of decay and vandalism, are a striking testimony to the perfection of production in a civilisation in which work was considered to be but a form of prayer, and the manufacturer was prompted to be, not a drudge, but an artist. ”

“ If the duty of right use and management of property, whether worldly or spiritual, is neglected, if the rich think that they are the sole lords and masters of that which they possess, and do not treat the needy as their brethren, there must of necessity arise an inner shattering of the commonwealth. False teachers and deceivers of the people will then gain influence, as has happened in Bohemia, by preaching to the people that earthly property should be equally distributed among all, and that the rich must be forcibly condemned to the division of their wealth. ”

“ Of course it would have been preferable that man should not have fallen from his natural innocence, in which case he could have lived a life of communism; but, as he had fallen, and communism had from that moment become impossible, property must be respected as the one institution which could put a curb on his avarice, and preserve a society of fallen men from chaos and general rapine. ”

“ For it was devised for the sake of exchange, but usury multiplies it. And hence usury has received the name of [Greek: tokos] , or produce; for whatever is produced is itself like its parents; and usury is merely money born of money; so that of all means of money-making it is the most contrary to nature.' [1] We need not pause here to discuss the precise significance of Aristotle's conceptions on this subject, as they are to us not so much of importance in themselves, as because they suggested a basis for the treatment of usury to Aquinas and his followers. ”

“ Voluntary commutations are when a man voluntarily transfers his chattel to another person. And if he transfer it simply so that the recipient incurs no debt, as in the case of gifts, it is an act not of justice, but of liberality. A voluntary transfer belongs to justice in so far as it includes the notion of debt.' Aquinas then goes on to distinguish between the different kinds of contract, sale, usufruct, loan, letting and hiring, and deposit, and concludes, 'In all these actions the mean is taken in the same way according to the equality of repayment. ”

“ The classical economists committed the cardinal error of subordinating man to wealth, and consumption to production. In their attempt to preserve symmetry and order in their generalisations they constructed a weird creature, the economic man, who never existed, and never could exist. The mediævals made no such mistake. They insisted that all production and gain which did not lead to the good of man was not alone wasteful, but positively evil; and that man was infinitely more important than wealth. ”

“ The question at issue therefore between what we may call the subjective and objective schools is not whether the sale price was determined by competition in the modern sense, but whether the common estimation of those best qualified to form an opinion on the subject in itself determined the just price, or whether it was merely the most reliable evidence of what the just price in fact was at a particular moment. ”

“ What the mediæval teaching on commerce really amounted to was that, while commerce was as legitimate as any other occupation, owing to the numerous temptations to avarice and dishonesty which it involved, it must be carefully scrutinised and kept within due bounds. It was more difficult to insure the observance of the just price in the case of a sale by a merchant than in one by an artificer; and the power which the merchant possessed of raising the price of the necessaries of life on the poor by engrossing and speculation rendered him a person whose operations should be carefully controlled. ”

“ Slavery is unjust according to the law of nature. This is what is contrary to the teaching of Aristotle, but conformable to that of the Stoics. (2) Slavery is just as a consequence of sin. This is the new principle peculiar to St. Augustine. He has found a principle of slavery, which is neither natural inequality, nor war, nor agreement, but sin. Slavery is no more a transitory fact which we accept provisionally, so as not to precipitate a social revolution: it is an institution which has become natural as a result of the corruption of our nature. ”

“ It is quite clear from this passage that Aquinas regarded property as something essential to the existence of society in the natural condition of human nature—that is to say, the condition that it had acquired at the fall. It is precisely the greed and avarice of fallen man that renders property an indispensable institution. ”

“ The attempt to determine an ideal price implies that there can and ought to be stability in relative values and stability in the measure of values—which is absurd. The mediæval doctrine and its application rested upon another assumption which we have outlived. Value is not a quality which inheres in an object so that it can have the same worth for everybody; it arises from the personal preference and needs of different people, some of whom desire a thing more and some less, some of whom want to use it in one way and some in another. ”

“ Without commerce no community can of course exist, but immoderate commerce is rather hurtful than beneficial, because it fosters greed of gain and gold, and enervates and emasculates the nation through love of pleasure and luxury.' [7] Nider says that to buy not for use but for sale at a higher price is called trade. Two special rules apply to this: first, that it should be useful to the State, and second, that the price should correspond to the diligence, prudence, and risk undertaken in the transaction. ”

“ Biel, who lays down the justice of slavery so unambiguously, is no less clear in his statement of the limitations of the right. 'The body of the slave is not simply in the power of the master as the body of an ox is; nor can the master kill or mutilate the slave, nor abuse him contrary to the law of God. ”

“ The definition which Aquinas gives was accepted by all later writers: 'A tradesman is one whose business consists in the exchange of things. According to the philosopher, exchange of things is twofold; one natural, as it were, and necessary, whereby one commodity is exchanged for another, or money taken in exchange for a commodity in order to satisfy the needs of life. Such trading, properly speaking, does not belong to traders, but rather to housekeepers or civil servants, who have to provide the household or the State with the necessaries of life. ”

“ There is no necessity to labour a point so universally admitted by all students of the Gospels as that Christ and His Apostles did not set out to abolish the slavery which they found everywhere around them, but rather aimed, by preaching charity to the master and patience to the slave, at the same time to lighten the burden of servitude, and to render its acceptance a merit rather than a disgrace. 'What, in fact,' says Janet, 'is the teaching of St. Peter, St. Paul, and the Apostles in general? It is, in the first place, that in Christ there are no slaves, and that all men are free and equal ”

“ In this sense the possession of all things in common and universal freedom is said to be of the natural law, because, to wit, the distinction of possession and slavery were not brought in by nature, but devised by human reason for the benefit of human life. ”

“ The duty of using one's goods for the benefit of one's neighbours was a fit matter for enforcement by the State, provided that the burdens imposed by legislation were equitable. 'Laws are said to be just, both from the end, when, to wit, they are ordained to the common good—and from their author, that is to say, when the law that is made does not exceed the power of the law-giver—and from their form, when, to wit, burdens are laid on the subjects according to an equality of proportion and with a view to the common good. ”

“ Both in the case of avarice and prodigality the offending state of mind consisted in attaching a wrong value to wealth, and the inculcation of the virtue of liberality must have been attended with good results not alone to the souls of individuals, but to the economic condition of the community. The avaricious man not only imperilled his own soul by attaching too much importance to temporal gain, but he also injured the community by monopolising too large a share of its wealth ”

“ If Christianity can be said to have possessed any distinctive social theory, it was intense individualism. 'Christianity brought, from the point of view of morals, an altogether new force by the distinctly individual and personal character of its precepts. Duty, vice or virtue, eternal punishment—all are marked with the most individualist imprint that can be imagined. No social or political theory appeared, because it was through the individual that society was to be regenerated.... ”

“ As therefore the price is a kind of measure of the equality to be observed in contracts, and as it is sometimes difficult to find that measure with exactitude, on account of the varied and corrupt desires of man, it becomes expedient that the medium should be fixed according to the judgment of some wise man.... In the civil state, however, nobody is to be decreed wiser than the lawgiving authority. Therefore it behoves the latter, whenever it is possible to do so, to fix the just price, which may not be exceeded by private consent, and which must be enforced.'... ”

“ It is quite impossible to comprehend how modern writers can see in the usury teaching of the scholastics a fatal discouragement to the enterprise of traders and capitalists; and it is equally impossible to understand how socialists can find in that doctrine any suggestion of support for the proposition that all unearned income is immoral and unjust. ”

“ The owner of property, as we shall see, was bound to observe certain duties in respect of its acquisition and its consumption, and certain other duties in respect of its exchange, whether it consisted of goods or of money. The whole fabric of mediæval economics was based on the foundation of private property; and the elaborate and logical system of regulations to ensure justice in economic life would have had no purpose or no use if the subject matter of that justice were abolished. ”

“ It has been said that Christianity is the only religion which combines religion and ethics in one system of teaching; but although Christian religious and ethical teaching are combined in the teaching of the Catholic Church, they are not inseparable. Those who are willing to discuss the adoption of the Socialist ethic, which is not combined with any spiritual dogmas, should not refuse to consider the Christian ethic, which might equally be adopted without subscribing to the Christian dogma. ”

“ The argument in favour of what we have called the 'objective' theory of the just price is strengthened by the consideration that goods do not satisfy mere subjective whims, but supply real wants. For example, food supplies a real need of the human being, as also does clothing; in the one case hunger is appeased, and in the other cold is warded off, just as drugs used in medical practice produce real objective effects on the person taking them. ”

“ The institution of property thus represents the fall of man from his primitive innocence, through greed and avarice, which refused to recognise the common ownership of things, and also the method by which the blind greed of human nature might be controlled and regulated. ”

“ We have here a recognition of the principle that the value of labour is not to be measured by anything extrinsic to itself, e.g. by the value of the product, but by its own natural function and end, and this function and end is the supplying of the requirements of human life. ”

“ Albertus Magnus conceded that 'although usury is contrary to the perfection of Christian laws, it is at least not contrary to civil interests'; [1] and Aquinas also justified the toleration of usury by the State: 'Human laws leave certain things unpunished, on account of the condition of those who are imperfect, and who would be deprived of many advantages if all sins were strictly forbidden and punishments appointed for them. ”

“ Nowadays the reverse has taken place; unrestricted competition has in many cases resulted in the reduction of wages to a level below the margin of subsistence; and the general cry of the working classes is for the compulsory fixing of minimum rates of wages which will ensure that their subsistence will not be liable to be impaired by the fluctuations of the markets. What the workers of the present day look to as a desirable, but almost unattainable, ideal, was the universal practice in the ages when economic relations were controlled by Christian principles. ”