rate of interest

“The legal rate of interest throughout the Babylonian Empire was 20%; the laws of Manu permitted 24%, while the laws of the Egyptians only stepped in to prevent more than 100%.”

The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation

“The greater part of this sum, which had been borrowed at a high rate of interest from native usurers, had been spent in assisting Abdallah Pasha, the family of the Sheikh Beshyr, and many other victims of political malignity.”

Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century

“And in consideration of the relation that exists between Union Bethel A.M. E. Church, as the Metropolitan Church aforesaid, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church Connection, it is further agreed that all the money paid hereunder by the party of the second part, shall be held by Union Bethel A.M. E. Church as a loan without interest for ten years; and afterwards at such rate of interest as may be agreed upon by the parties of the first and second part, or their successors.”

Scraps of African Methodist Episcopal History

“In my dreams something was always falling suddenly and heavily, and at times my nurse seemed to punish me for my unkind treatment of her in the daytime and return at an usurer's rate of interest my kickings and pinchings.”

The Story of My Life

“As to her money, she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest -- fifty or sixty per cent.: which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.”

Jane Eyre: an autobiography, Vol. I.

“Even a money-lender is not above taking a slightly lower rate of interest and saying nothing about it.”

THE SCAB