Aquinas’s “Letter on the Treatment of the Jews,” part 5
Aquinas goes on to say that usury defrauds rulers of their own proper revenue, and that it would be better if princes compel their Jewish subjects to work for their own living rather than practice usury. What this overlooks is Aquinas’s above policy of permitting rulers to take for their own use any property the Jews acquire by non-usurious means, a policy calculated to discourage the Jews from “working for their own living.” Another point made by Aquinas is that any gift given by a Jew that was acquired through usury must also be returned by the receiver to the one from which the usury was taken.
The remainder of Aquinas’s letter takes up a number of more general questions posed by the Countess about proper governance. It is indeed permissible, Aquinas says, to sell government offices for a reasonable price, but only to people who are capable and qualified to perform those offices. A better practice, he urges, is to hire and, if necessary, even compel against their will the most suitable men to fill an office, as sometimes the most suited candidate is someone who is poor and so not able to purchase it, and if they are rich, the financial gain of the office is not sufficient to tempt them into taking it. The legitimacy or even wisdom of forcing someone to fill an office that they do not want Aquinas does not address. What is not permitted is a ruler receiving a loan from someone in exchange for receiving an office, as this would involve them in effect making money (from the exercise of the office) off of a monetary loan, which Aquinas categorizes as a form of usury. If a ruler gives someone an office freely and without conditions, however, and afterwards happens to receive a (non-interest paying) loan from that same person, this would be lawful and not usurious.[1] Whatever one may think of the coherence of Aquinas’s rejection of usury, to his credit, he is remarkably consistent in his rejection of usury.
[1] Aquinas makes the same point about a gift given in appreciation for a loan in ST II-II, q. 78, a. 2: if a lender receives a freely offered gift from a borrower in appreciation for a (non-interest paying) loan, it is not usury, so long as the loan was not made on condition or in consideration of a future gift.
The Natural Law Libertarian 