Payday Pundit

This was forwarded to the Payday Pundit by an industry source who received it today from a university professor.

In “Defence of Usury” (1787), Jeremy Bentham noted that each borrower is someone “who has every motive and every means for forming a right judgment [about the offered terms]; who has every motive and every means for informing himself of the circumstances, upon which rectitude of judgment, in the case in question, depends.”

 Bentham continued: “The legislator, who knows nothing, nor can know any thing, of any one of all these circumstances, who knows nothing at all about the matter, comes and says to him - ‘It signifies nothing; you shall not have the money: for it would be doing you a mischief to let you borrow it upon such terms.’ - And this out of prudence and loving-kindness! - There may be worse cruelty: but can there be greater folly?”*