This general theory of the Early and Mediæval Church could not fail to be a boon during the times when commerce and trade and business were being practised among illiterate people, and when the chief need was to protect the poor from exploitation. It prevented, over large areas of the earth's surface, that very evil arising, which has been, from time immemorial, the curse of India-the evil of perpetual indebtedness. For we have learnt in India, to our cost and shame, what hopeless serfdom arises when the debt can never be repaid because of the arrears of accumulated compound interest behind it. We shall find it hard to estimate highly enough the value of the moral effect of the Church's teaching, which made avarice one of the seven deadly sins. It must be remembered that acceptance of interest was regarded by the Mediæval Church as one form of this sin of avarice. For that reason usury was banned, and men were excommunicated who demanded interest. But as the new life flowed back over Europe during the Middle Ages, and new townships arose, fresh problems of commerce and industry came up before the minds of Christian thinkers for settlement. Towns, fairs, guilds, crafts, and sea-borne commerce, all required a remodelling of economic laws. Bologna, in Italy, clung tenaciously to a re-enactment of the old Roman code of trade and property. This, as we have already seen, was based on the three founda tions of (i) absolute private ownership, (ii) accumulated interest, and (iii) unrestricted contract. For a long time this code still held the ground in civil matters, and its retention led to great confusion. The Medieval Church, on the other hand, clung tenaciously to the teaching of the Fathers. It was felt with intensity-and every fresh monastic movement brought home the truth more clearly-that the first duty of the Christian Church was towards the poor. It was claimed that the poor, for whom Christ died, could not be safeguarded from the unrestricted exploitation of the rich and powerful, except by the complete prohibition of "usury." On many other sides, alas ! the Medieval Church weakly and timidly gave way in favour of the rich against the poor. The Church accepted feudalism, for instance, with its basis of serfdom and villeinage. But it stood out to the bitter en on this question of taking interest. To make profit ou of a fellow man's distress was regarded as sinful and unchristian. The rise of the Franciscan orders gave great strength to the Church in her struggle against usury." Clement V went so far as to declare that all ancient Roman civil law concerning " usury" was null and void. People who engaged in usury were to be excommunicated and condemned as heretics. 66 In conjunction with this doctrine of the "sin of usury" the doctrine of "just price" was also formulated. Indeed, this second theory stands, side by side with the condemnation of "usury," as the twin pillar of economic righteousness, on which the social structure of the Middle Ages was built up. S. Thomas Aquinas gives most clearly, among the schoolmen, the definition of this doctrine of the "just price." In effecting a sale, or a barter, he says, it is the moral duty of both buyer and seller always to strive to reach a just price according to recognised standards, and neither of the two must ask for, or receive, anything more than the just price itself. The seller is to use, on all occasions, exactly true weights and measures. He is to state openly any flaws which may be present in the article sold. The buyer is not to conceal his income, or his own standard of living, or his capacity for payment. If it be objected that this is beyond weak human nature, S. Thomas Aquinas answers that it is not beyond the power of God. Historically, it may be stated briefly and generally that this condemnation of the "sin of usury" and this insistence upon the "just price" were recognised in the Church as definitely Christian doctrines all through the Middle Ages. They were both preached and practised. But when trade and overseas commerce developed, they failed more and more in actual practice. Men found them too difficult. The commercial value of loans and partnerships as aids to increased production began to fill men's minds. At last, in the fifteenth century, these new problems, which had to be faced and solved, roused the energy of a new body of Christian thinkers. A school of writers, named the Canonists, attempted to formulate a complete doctrine of trade founded on the two recognised Christian principles of the "sin of usury" and the "just price." Starting from the highest moral sense of the time as to right and wrong, they drew up an elaborate body of rules with regard to trade conduct. They worked back from the moral fitness of things, when ideally considered, to what was lawful and expedient among ordinary Christians. It is interesting to find that the works of these Canonists, dealing with the power and use of money, are catalogued in mediæval libraries under the head of Christian Dogmatics." 66 The most important positions adopted by the Canonists were as follows : (i) The accumulation of wealth, as an end in itself, is forbidden to a Christian. Wealth must be used only in order to serve and to maintain each man's Godgiven status in society. To amass wealth, in order to go beyond one's station, and thus to overthrow society, is a deadly sin—the sin of avarice. Cowley, the poet, in a later century, thus describes this mediæval theory of status "Thou, that art born a gentleman, As thou dost hold of the king, As well as thou, in his degree." Thus, the only true claim to wealth is the proper observance of the duties of one's station in society. In those who are rich, this observance depends on help and protection. In those who are poor, this observance depends on the service of willing obedience. Wealth may be lawfully amassed up to the point of those services which have to be rendered by each member, in his degree, to society. But all other accumulation of wealth is strictly forbidden. I would note here, in a parenthesis, how near this comes, at certain points, to some of the caste regulations of ancient India. When the civilised world, both in the East and the West, has given up its belief in ruthless competition and unlimited capitalism and unrestricted private property-beliefs which have led on and on to the creation of multi-millionaires, land-monopolists, trust-magnates, steel-kings, and other abnormalities, then these ancient social systems will be once more carefully studied afresh in order to recover some of the fundamental laws of a progressive communal life. They failed in the past, it is true. They were incomplete and faulty, it is true. But they still have remarkable and original lessons of their own to teach us, if we do not despise them as out of date. For what we are slowly and painfully learning to-day is this, that the individualistic basis of society has failed in its turn-grievously, pitiably failed. We have to get back to a more communal basis somehow. This does not necessarily mean |