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Plato in the Laws
1 forbids people to take any
water from a neighbour's land unless they have dug
on their own land down to a layer of potter's clay,
as it is called, and found that the place will not produce a flow of water ; for the potter's clay, being
by nature oily and solid, holds back the water that
reaches it and does not let it through ; but, he says,
those shall have a share of others' water who cannot
get any of their own, for the law gives relief to those
in want. Ought there not, then, to be a law about
money also, that people shall not borrow from others
or resort to other people's springs who have not first
examined their resources at home and brought together, as from little trickles, what is useful and
necessary to themselves ? But now, because of
their luxury and effeminacy or their extravagance,
they make no use of what is their own, though they
possess it, but take from others at a high rate of
interest, though they have no need of doing so.
There is strong evidence of this : loans are not
made to people in need, but to those who wish to
acquire some superfluity for themselves. And a
man produces a witness and a surety to aver that,
[p. 319]
since the man has property, he deserves credit,
whereas, since he has it, he ought not to be
borrowing.
1 Plato, Laws, 844 b.