PHI LOS 0 P H Y . - Classic Works of Apologetics Online

Lending of Mone'y' 119
It is a question which sometimes occurs, ho.
money borrowec! !n one. country ought to be paid
in another, where the relative value of the precious
metals is not the same.
For example, suppose I bor
rowan hundred guineas in London, where each gum..,
ea is worth one and twenty shilling:;, and meet my
creditor in the East Indies, where a guinea is worth
no more perhaps than nineteen, is it a satisfaction
of the debt to return a hundred guineas; or must I
make up so many times one and twenty shillings ? I I
should think the latter: for it must be presumed, i
that my creditor, had he not lent me his guineas,
would have disposed of them, in such a manner, as
to have now had, in the place of them, so many
one and twenty shillings; and the question supposes,
that he neither intended, nor ought to be a suiferer,
by parting with the possession of his money to me,;
When the relative value. of coin is· altered by an
!let of the state, if the alteration would have extended
to the identical pieces which were lent, it is enough
to return an equal number of pieces of the same denomination,
or their present value in any other. As
if guineas were reduced by an act of parliament to
twenty shillings, so many twenty shillings as I borrowed
guineas, \vould be a just repayment. It would
be otherwise, if the reduction was owing to a de-.
basement of the coin; for then respect ought to be
had to the comparative value of the old guinea and
the new.
Whoever borrows IIloney is bound in conscience
to repay it. This every man can see: but every
man cannot see, or does not, however, reflect, that
he is, in consequence; also bound to use the means
necessary to enable himself to repay it. "If he
pay the money when he has it, or has it to spare,
he does all that an honest man can do," and all, he
imagines, that is required of him; whilst the previ.
ous measures, which are necessary to furnish hi.lII.
Q
_