Borrower

“ If the borrower pays it punctually without hesitations and defalcations, without difficulties, and, above all, without compulsion, what is the consequence?—he is called an honest man, he has the reputation of a punctual fair dealer. And what then?—why, then, he may borrow again whenever he will, he may take up money and goods, or anything, upon his bare words, or note; when another man must give bondsmen, or mainprize, that is, a pawn or pledge for security, and hardly be trusted to neither. This is credit. ”

“ Then since, as he says, The borrower is a slave to the lender, and the debtor to the creditor, disdain the chain, preserve your freedom, and maintain your independency. Be industrious and free; be frugal and free. At present, perhaps, you may think yourself in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a little extravagance without injury ”

“ If a borrower had already exhausted all available means of raising money, had sold or mortgaged everything he possessed of any value, what other course was open to him in his necessity except to impledge himself? ”

“ In process of time a new class of borrowers arise who demand money for temporary convenience or profit, but with full prospect of repayment—a relation of lender and borrower quite different from that of the earlier period, when it presented itself in the repulsive form of misery on the one side, set against the prospect of very large profit on the other. ”

“ Where the borrower gets, or hopes to get, it is just that the lender should share in the gain; but to him that borrows for his necessary food pity must be shown, and we must lend, hoping for nothing again, if we have wherewithal to do it, Luke vi. ”

“ The motive of the borrower, in most cases has been to hire more labor and to buy more materials for use in his business. Ordinarily these loans can and are renewed without difficulty or are replaced by others, based on the security of new business transactions in unbroken succession. ”

“ The borrower in any and every case gives a real and valuable service in preservation and restoration at the end of the term, while the lender renders no personal service nor does he part with a particle of his wealth.
There is always a service rendered in caring for and preserving the property of another. ”

“ And in order to serve as many as possible in their turn, as well as to make the repayment of the principal borrowed more easy, each borrower shall be obliged to pay, with the yearly interest, one tenth part of the principal and interest, so paid in, shall be again let out to fresh borrowers. ”

“ Thus the nations should become subject to them, and dependent on them, as the borrower is servant to the lender, Prov. xxii. 7. To be able to lend, and not to have need to borrow, we must look upon as a great mercy, and a good reason why we should do good with what we have, lest we provoke God to turn the scales.
II. Here is a law in favour of poor borrowers, that they might not suffer damage by the former law. Men would be apt to argue, If the case of a man be so with his debtor that if the debt be not paid before the year of release it shall be lost, it were better not to lend. ”

“ Borrowing, as already stated, is a transaction by which, on one side, the lender parts with his money, and on the other the borrower agrees to repay it in such form and at such time as may be stipulated. Though not a necessary part of the contract of borrowing, it is usual for the borrower to offer securities for the repayment of the loan. ”

“ A well-known borrower stopped a gentleman whom he did not know, and requested the loan of a sovereign. "Sir," said the gentleman, "I am surprised that you should ask me such a favor, who do not know you."—"O, dear sir," replied the borrower, "that's the very reason; for those who do, will not lend me a farthing."
DCCCLXXXV.—WILL AND THE WAY.
At a provincial Law Society's dinner the president called upon the senior attorney to give as a toast the person whom he considered the best friend of the profession. "Certainly," was the response. "The man who makes his own will." ”

“ When a loan is made, the attention of the borrower is seldom called to the rapidity of increase and the dangers of accumulation. If this were done, and a prompt return of both principal and interest required, at the end of the term the borrower would soon be alarmed at the hopelessness of permanent gain through debt. ”

“ This is done in a very convenient manner by lending their own promissory notes payable to bearer on demand—the borrower being willing to accept these as so much money, because the credit of the lender makes other people willingly receive them on the same footing, in purchases or other payments. These notes, therefore, perform all the functions of currency, and render an equivalent amount of money, which was previously in circulation, unnecessary. ”

“ They exacted interest from them at twelve per cent, the hundredth part every month, v. 11. If men borrow large sums to trade with, to increase their stocks, or to purchase land, there is no reason why the lender should not share with the borrower in his profit ”

“ The fact that the borrower pays interest while the bank undertakes a noninterest-bearing obligation, or pays relatively low interest, explains in the main the gains attending the business of commercial banking. ”

“ It is the physiognomy of the borrowers that I have just been sketching, of those wretches of all ranks, who are forced by some dire necessity, whether accidental or normal, to come and pledge their clothes or their jewels; to exhaust—in order not to die of hunger or to meet an overdue debt—the resources which are still at their disposal. ”

“ Loans shall be made only for the purposes which promise to result in a saving or a profit to the borrower. Each applicant for a loan must state the object for which he desires to borrow, in order that the credit committee, which passes on all loans, may rigidly exclude thriftless and improvident borrowing. ”

“ There is the slow deliberate manner, in using which the borrower attempts to carry the wished-for lender along with him by force of argument, and to prove that the desire to borrow shows no imprudence on his own part, and that a tendency to lend will show none on the part of the intended lender. ”

“ A capital lent at interest may, in this manner, be considered as an assignment, from the lender to the borrower, of a certain considerable portion of the annual produce, upon condition that the borrower in return shall, during the continuation of the loan, annually assign to the lender a small portion, called the interest ”

“ Under the operation of a shrinkage in the volume of money, this enormous mass of borrowers, at the maturity of their respective debts, though nominally paying no more than the amount borrowed, with interest, are in reality, in the amount of the principal alone, returning a percentage of value greater than they received—more in equity than they contracted to pay.... ”

“ The teaching of the canonists on rents and partnership shows clearly that the owner of capital might draw a profit from another's labour, and the central point of the usury teaching was that money which has been lent, and employed so as to produce a profit by the borrower, belongs not 'to another,' but to the very man who employed it, namely, the borrower. ”

“ Each borrower must specify the purpose for which he wants a loan, say to buy a cow or drain a field, or pay off a money-lender, and this is rigorously inquired into. Only members can borrow. Any member, however poor, can borrow for a profitable approved purpose, and no one, however rich, for any other. Practically all the members see that the money is applied as agreed; and, while the loan is often made for a long period, a year or two—even for ten or more—so as to repay itself out of the profit, power is reserved to call it in at short notice if misapplied. ”

“ When money is loaned at the minimum rate of two per cent, or in exceptional cases one and a half per cent a month, the borrower, besides giving security, generally gets some wellknown and reliable merchant to endorse the note. As this merchant cannot afford to have his credit brought in question, the chances of loss are very small. ”

“ All persons in business are occasionally, and most of them constantly, borrowers: while all persons not in business, who possess monied property, are lenders. Between these two great bodies there is a numerous, keen, and intelligent class of middlemen, composed of bankers, stockbrokers, discount brokers, and others, alive to the slightest breath of probable gain. ”

“ As Bankers and Exchangers do furnish men with money for their occasions, so do they likewise who let out their money at interest with the same hopes and like advantage, which many times notwithstanding fails them, as well as the Borroweres often labour onely for the Lenders profit. ”

“ All stock brokers are large borrowers in their business, but here was an instance in which this universal custom was given as an excuse for not making a loan of five thousand dollars to a friend in trouble. ”

“ Where credit is abundant and relatively cheap, borrowers spend beyond their incomes, hoping to pay later when the loan falls due. Borrowing and over-spending are among human frailties. They are also forms of risk-taking or gambling. ”

“ Interest would be forced down to the point which would either tempt borrowers to take a greater amount of loans than they had a reasonable expectation of being able to employ in their business, or would so discourage a portion of the lenders, as to make them either forbear to accumulate, or endeavour to increase their income by engaging in business on their own account, and incurring the risks, if not the labours, of industrial employment. ”

“ Those borrowers who expected to renew old loans on maturity would have to consider little beyond the interest demanded by lenders, while borrowers who expected to pay off the loans out of the proceeds of their ventures would be interested primarily in the amount of goods that would sell for sufficient money to make up the principal. ”

“ The money when borrowed, must be made use of in some way—many of the borrowers, having no good use for it, either trifled it away, in unnecessary expenses, or in the purchase of land, which soon rose, nominally, to twice its value. ”

“ The borrower is just the man to forget the whole transaction. So there is a blank in the shelves, a gap p. 112among the orderly volumes, a blank never to be filled up, unless our amateur advertises his woes in the newspapers.
All borrowers are bad; but in this, as in other crimes, there are degrees. The man who acts as Ménage advises, in the aphorism which Garrick used as a motto on his bookplate, the man who reads a book instantly and promptly returns it, is the most pardonable borrower. ”

“ At maturity all the borrowers received canceled mortgages, and the non-borrowers cash for their shares, and the society then closed its affairs. Hundreds of such associations have wound up their affairs successfully. ”

“ I am well aware that there were a good many persons who could not get all the loans they wanted; but the difficulty in such cases was not that there was not a sufficiency of money in the loan market, but that the security offered was not deemed satisfactory by the lenders. But not only lenders, but also borrowers, had become circumspect and timid, and thus there remained vast quantities of money in the banks which could not find safe and profitable employment. ”

“ Or, if a gentleman be known to spend more than his income, to mortgage his lands to take no care of his estate, or how his stewards or bailiffs manage it; if he run in debt to tradesmen and mechanicks, and be perpetually borrowing money, without any thoughts how to pay it: I say, under such management, no fair dealer will have any thing to do with them; and of course they fall into the hands of scriveners, knavish attorneys, and griping usurers; will be fed from hand to mouth, pay double and treble interest for what they receive, till their creditors watch their opportunity, and sweep all. ”

“ Property has been long set aside for the payment of that debt to its utmost farthing. My father felt that while that money remained unpaid there was a brand on himself and his family, and he has wrought, wrought as few men have wrought, to pay off, not only that, but other obligations of a sacred character. Many a bill of exchange, the proceeds of his labour, has he sent to old creditors who were in need of what he owed. ”

“ The farmer was chronically wanting to borrow, and his security was getting shaky. I’d like to borrow five thousand, pleaded the farmer. The banker cupped his hand to his ear and said: Speak a little louder and cut down the amount.
Thousands of girls are sent out into the world with what is called finished educations, who cannot even give a proper receipt for money, to say nothing of drawing a promissory note, a draft or a bill, or understanding the significance and importance of business contracts.
Such a woman presented a check for payment to the paying teller of her bank. ”

“ But it is, in fact, borrowing money on a promise to pay; and in the case of the government it is borrowing upon a kind of promise to pay, which is a part of the medium of exchange, and of that which is, in the full legal sense, money.
We perceive, then, a great difference between private borrowing and public borrowing. [63] When a nation borrows it may, as we see, borrow with its currency; and if its currency be made a legal tender it may borrow with that. ”

“ If a banker can loan on a bill of lading or a warehouse receipt, or a trader can buy the same, or if a man can give a trust receipt to his banker agreeing that all his general shipments or stock in trade shall be the property of that banker until his debt is paid, it makes enormously for the rapid turning over of capital, and the extension of credit. ”

“ The plain fact is that wherever there is one bank that attempts to pay its debts, there must be great distress; but in those places where there are two or more, God help the people! The curse of borrowing, of suffering 'paper to do our business,' is falling heavily upon us." "With nearly $500 in notes of different sizes, and of many old and respectable banks, in his pocketbook, the writer of this article was compelled, on Saturday last, to borrow market money." "Misery abounds and the neighborhood of every bank is a neighborhood of bankrupts, positive or anticipated." ”