principal, the rents of the pledge being counted in it, he resign the same (pledge) immediately to said R. notwithstanding such pact or oath.' Innocent III., An. 1212.*

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The Catholic Church in these Canons imposes no new obligation; nothing but what is pre-ordained in both Testaments. What shall we say, says the Catechism of the Council of Trent, on the seventh Commandment, of those rich people who squeeze most severely their insolent debtors, and even carry from them, contrary to God's prohibition, those pledges that are necessary for sheltering their bodies for God says, Exod. xxii. 26. If you receive a garment in pledge from your neighbor, you shall restore it to him before the setting sun; for that is the only covering of his flesh, by which he is clothed; nor has he any other in which to sleep: if he should cry to me, I shall hear him, because I am merciful. The cruelty of their exortion is rapine.' DEUT. xxiv. 10. When you will demand of your neighbor any thing that he oweth you, you shall not go into his house to take away a pledge: but if he be poor, the pledge shall not lodge with you that night, but you shall restore it to him presently, before the going down of the sun, that he may sleep in his own garment and bless you, and you may have justice before the Lord your God. EZECH. Xviii. 12. The man who restores not the pledge, who gives at usury and receives increase, will he live? He shall not live. When he does all these destable things, he shall die a death: his blood shall be on himself.

And there was a great cry of the people, and of their wives, against their brethren the Jews; and there were some that said, Let us mortgage our lands, and our vineyards, and our houses; and let us take corn, because of the famine; and others said, Let us borrow money for the king's tribute, and let us give up our fields and our vineyards. Behold, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters, and some of our daughters are bondwomen already; neither have we wherewith to redeem them; and our fields and our vineyards other men possess. And I was exceedingly angry when I heard their cry, according to these words; and I rebuked the nobles and the magistrates, and said to them, Do you, every one, exact usury

* See page 110, Chap. 2; page 113, Chap. 8.

from your brethren? Restore to them this day their fields and their vineyards, and their houses, and the hundredth part of the money, corn, wine, and of the oil which you were wont to exact from them, give it rather for them: 2. ESDRAS v. 1.

'Christ came not to break, but to fulfil the law and the prophets.' Notwithstanding, is there any thing more common than mortgagees and pawnbrokers? The former make of the pledge, in a few years, three times as much as they lend; the latter have their stores full of pawned articles, kettles, pots, blankets, sheets, quilts, hats, coats, gowns, shoes, stockings-seeking riches through the misery of their fellow-creatures. They charge twenty-five per cent. interest.

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What can be more unreasonable,' as St. Chrysostom says, than their sowing without rain, culture, plough? The tillers of this pestiferous soil will reap tares for eternal flames; in pursuit of riches, they enkindle for themselves everlasting fire.' What church do they belong to; what religious creed do they profess? It is hard to tell; they certainly are no Roman Catholics though some of them may boast of that name, that is all the pretensions they can have to that church; for, in addition to the above frightful texts of Scripture, they incur all the interdicts, excommunications, suspensions, and maledictions, decreed by the Councils of Nice, Lateran, Vienne, and Lyons, against notorious usurers; of whom they are the most odious and most infamous : infamy was attached to the character of all usurers, especially pawnbrokers, in every country, since the first dawn of Christianity, until these forty years, so that their offspring was despised and deserted in matrimonial, and in every other honorable connexion, as much as the offspring of the murderer and felon. But, since that time, so great is the decay of faith and morals everywhere, that virtue retires in silent grief, whilst vice stalks abroad with open front. False prophets arise and seduce many, and iniquity has abounded, and the charity of many has waxed cold :' MATT. xxvi. 12. If the Redeemer come again, he would not find faith upon earth.' Luke xviii. 8.

6

O Ireland! well may you cry with the poor Jews against your We have mortgaged our fields, and our houses, and The fund-holders and

brethren.

our vineyards, to pay the king's tributes.

the tax-gatherers have searched our little substance, PSALM cviii. 11. Our beer and our porter; our tea and our sugar; our cloths and iron, are taxed for these monsters: our trade and our culture, and factories destroyed by the weight of the duties. Our butter, our beef, and our bacon exported to pay unto them. "Our children are orphans, our wives are widows, poor, wandering, ejected from their holdings by the usurers; others plunder the fruit of their labor; there is none to relieve, none to pity their little ones.' Our sons and our daughters are in bondage; some seek in every foreign clime, under the scorching heat of the sun, and the piercing cold of winter, exposed to the frowns of the stranger, that asylum denied them at home. Others, with the dying man's grasp, still cling to their natal soil, trying to rescue mere existence-the small relics of their means, from the fund-holder, the tax-gatherer, tytheproctor, and from the bankrupt. Getting no protection from the powers, they unfortunately think they ought to take the law into their own hands. Hence, the gaols, and the gibbet, and the gallows, nay, hell herself, seems to have opened her mouth. Alas! our hearts bleed with grief; the sun of our joy is for ever gone down; there is no ray of hope. No longer will our green fields witness the rural sport; our dances, our races, our hurling, no more. Our sweet cottage no longer cheers with the song of the bride, nor our valleys echo to the lute or the lyre. No longer, O no longer, will our sacred vaults resound with the organ or choir! O Lord! how long wilt thou be angry with us for ever? Remember thine own congregation, that which thou didst possess from the beginning.

RENTS, AND FUNDS.

SEPTIMI DECRET. lib. 2, tit. 12, 'Whereas at undertaking the burden of the Apostolical servitude we have learned that innumerable contracts of rent have been, and are daily, celebrated, which are not only not confined within the limits prescribed by our ancestors for these contracts, but even, what is worse, under conditions directly contrary; moreover, they carry, on the face of them, an ardent stimulous for avarice, a manifest contempt even of the Divine laws, consulting, as we are bound to do, for the salvation of souls

and in compliance even with the petitions of pious minds, to remedy by a salutary antidote such grievious disease and pestiferous poison.

We by this our constitution decree, that rent, or an annuity, can by no means be created, or constituted, unless in an immovable thing, or a thing that may be considered as immoveable, of its own nature fruitful, and that may be nominally designated by certain limits.

Again, unless in money truly paid down, in the presence of witnesses and a notary, and in the actual celebration of an instrument, but not when the entire and just price is not first received.

We forbid that the payments which are commonly called anticipated, be made or brought into agreement.

It is our will that the conventions binding directly or indirectly to the casual accidences the man who would not otherwise be liable to them from the nature of the contracts, be, by no means valid.

Nor the pact, likewise, taking away or restraining the liberty of alienating the thing subject to the rent, because we wish that that thing be always alienated, freely and without the payment of a fine, or a portion of the sales, or of another quantity or thing, as well during the people's life as in their last will.

But, when the thing is to be sold, we wish that the lord of the rent be preferred to all others, and that the conditions of the sale be intimated to him, and that he be waited for a month.

Let the pacts providing that the remiss debtor of the rent be liable to pay the loss, expenses, or salaries of the creditor, to lose the thing, or any part of the thing, subject to the rent, or to forfeit any right arising to him from that contract, or otherwise, or to incur any penalty, be entirely null and void.

Moreover, we strictly forbid both that the rent be augmented, and new rent created upon the same or another thing, in favor of the same, or of a person appointed by him, in consideration of the rents of the past or future time,

And also, we annul the agreements, providing that the payment of the expenses do appertain to the man to whom they would not otherwise, from law and from the nature of the contract, appertain.

Finally, we wish that all rents to be hereafter created, do cease in proportion, not only when the thing is perished in the whole or

in part, or rendered in whole or in part fruitless; but that they may be extinguished for the same price, notwithstanding the prescription even of every long time, even immemorial, nay, of a hundred and more years, notwithstanding any pacts taking away, directly or indirectly, such liberty, with whatever words or clauses they be made up.

But when the income is to be extinguished, by delivering the price, we wish that this be intimated two months beforehand, by the person, to whom the price ought to be delivered and that, subsequent to the notice, the price can be recovered, however, within a year, from him, even against his will: and when he is not willing to demand the price within the year, we wish, however, that the rent can be extinguished at any time-the notice, however, being given, as said before, and notwithstanding the things that are mentioned above and we command that the same course be observed, even when the notice had been often and often given, and the effect never produced.

We also strictly prohibit the pacts, providing the price of the rent be, besides the case mentioned, recovered from the unwilling man, either for a penalty, or for another cause.

And we judge that contracts, to be celebrated hereafter, under any other form, are usurious.

And, notwithstanding, whatever thing should happen, against our orders, to be explicitly or implicitly given, remitted, or forgiven, we wish that it be claimed by the public treasury. We wish that this wholesome decree be observed perpetually, and in every respect, not only in annuities to be newly created, but likewise in alienating them that are at any time already created, provided they be created subsequent to the publication of this decree.

Declaring that the price once affixed to the rent can never be diminished or augmented, on account of the quality of the time, or of the contracting parties, or of any other accidence, nor with regard to any persons that may be ultimately concerned.

And though we do not extend this law to the contracts already celebrated, however we do exhort in the Lord all those persons to