Aquinas’s “Letter on the Treatment of the Jews,” part 4
While Aquinas has thus far only implied that it was permissible to take from the Jews any money that they acquired through usury, so long as it was returned to the original owner, Aquinas next goes further to suggest that rulers are morally obligated to financially penalize Jews for practicing usury. Here it is unclear whether Aquinas is proposing that the entire amount of the usurious gain be confiscated, or only a part of it. If it is the former, then this would amount to prohibiting usury outright, a policy conflicting with Aquinas’s (admittedly incoherent) position stated elsewhere that usury, although theft, can nevertheless be socially beneficial and may therefore be legally permitted.[1] If, however, Aquinas is only suggesting that the usurer be fined for only a part and not the whole of his usurious gain, then this raises the question of why, if the whole amount is theft, the whole amount shouldn’t be returned to its owner. It would also have the impractical and indeed counterproductive consequence of inducing the usurer simply to roll the now increased legal costs of his business into his prices, resulting in even higher interest rates than would otherwise be the case. (Making usury absolutely illegal, of course, would have the same outcome, only more so; the difference is that at least in the latter case, the law would be attempting to get rid of usury altogether, whereas in the previous case it would be begrudgingly permitting usury while at the same time making the conditions under which it is practiced even worse.) And of course, per Aquinas’s previous point, any fees the government might collect from usurers would need to be returned to the usurers’ victims, which would, if carried out consistently, have the effect of now lowering the effective interest rate, only with the added inefficiency of the government’s unnecessary intervention. Like his irrational prejudice against Jews, Aquinas’s irrational prejudice against usury leads him into confusion.
[1] See ST II-II, q. 78, a. 1 ad 3 and ST De Malo q. 13, a. 4, ad 6. John Finnis similarly observes a tension between Aquinas’s views on the legality of usury in the present passage and his urging its prohibition in his letter to the Countess. Finnis, Aquinas, 207n124. See also Hood, Aquinas and the Jews, 104-5.
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