"
"You know little about it indeed," he replied. "Usury, according
to our fathers, consists in little more than the intention of taking
the interest as usurious. Escobar, accordingly, shows you how you
may avoid usury by a simple shift of the intention. 'It would be
downright usury,' says he 'to take interest from the borrower, if we
should exact it as due in point of justice; but if only exacted as due
in point of gratitude, it is not usury. Again, it is not lawful to
have directly the intention of profiting by the money lent; but to
claim it through the medium of the benevolence of the borrower-
media benevolentia- is not usury.' These are subtle methods; but, to
my mind, the best of them all (for we have a great choice of them)
is that of the Mohatra bargain."
"The Mohatra, father!"
"You are not acquainted with it, I see," returned he. "The name is
the only strange thing about it. Escobar will explain it to you:
'The Mohatra bargain is effected by the needy person purchasing some
goods at a high price and on credit, in order to sell them over again,
at the same time and to the same merchant, for ready money and at a
cheap rate.' This is what we call the Mohatra- a sort of bargain,
you perceive, by which a person receives a certain sum of ready
money by becoming bound to pay more."
"But, sir, I really think nobody but Escobar has employed such a
term as that; is it to be found in any other book?"
"How little you do know of what is going on, to be sure!" cried
the father.
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