The institution was, however, very slow in obtaining a footing in France. It was adopted at Avignon in 1577, and at Arras in 1624. The doctors of the once powerful Sorbonne could not reconcile themselves to the lawfulness of in terest, and when a pawnshop was opened in Paris in 1626, it had to be closed within a year. Then it was that Jean Boucher pub lished his Defense des monts de piete. Marseilles obtained one in 1695; but it was not until 1777 that the first mont de piete was founded in Paris by royal patent. The statistics which have been preserved relative to the business done in the first few years of its existence show that in the twelve years between 1777 and the Rev olution, the average value of the pledges was 42 fr. 5o, which is well above the present average. The interest charged was 1 o% per annum, and large profits were made upon the sixteen million livres that were lent every year. The National Assembly, in an evil moment, destroyed the monopoly of the mont de piete, but it struggled on until 1795, when the competition of the money lenders compelled it to close its doors. So great, however, were the extortions of the usurers that the people began to clamour for its reopening, and in July 1797 it recommenced business with a fund of £20,000 founded by five private capitalists. At first it charged interest at the rate of 36% per annum, which was gradually re duced, the gradations being 3o, 24, 18, 15, and finally 12% in 1804. In 1806 it fell to 9%, and in 1887 to 7%. In 1806 Napoleon I. re-established its monopoly, while Napoleon III., as prince president, regulated it by new laws that are still in force. In Paris the pledge-shop is, in effect, a department of the administration; in the French provinces it is a municipal monopoly; and this is generally true throughout the continent of Europe.
In England the pawnbroker, like so many other distinguished personages, "came in with the Conqueror." From that time, indeed, to the famous legislation of Edward I., the Jew moneylender was the only pawnbroker. Yet, despite the val uable services which the class rendered, not infrequently to the Crown itself, the usurer was treated with studied cruelty—Sir Walter Scott's Isaac of York was no mere creation of fiction. These barbarities, by diminishing the number of Jews in the country, had, long before Edward's decree of banishment, begun to make it worth the while of the Lombard merchants to settle in England. It is now as well established as anything of the kind can be that the three golden balls, which have for so long been the trade sign of the pawnbroker, were the symbol which these Lom bard merchants hung up in front of their houses, and not, as has often been suggested, the arms of the Medici family. In 1338 Edward III. pawned his jewels to the Lombards to raise money for his war with France. Henry V. did much the same in 1415.
The Lombards were not popular, and Henry VII. harried them a good deal. In the very first year of James I. "An Act against Brokers" was passed and remained on the statute-book until 1872. It was aimed at "counterfeit brokers," of whom there were then many in London. This type of broker was evidently regarded as a mere receiver of stolen goods, for the act provided that "no sale or pawn of any stolen jewels, plate or other goods to any pawnbroker in London, Westminster or Southwark shall alter the property therein," and that "pawnbrokers refusing to produce goods to their owner from whom stolen shall forfeit double the value." Throughout both the 17th and 18th centuries the general sus picion of the pawnbroker appears to have been only too well founded. It would appear from the references Fielding makes to
the subject in Amelia, which was written when George II. was on the throne, that, taken in the mass, he was not a very scrupulous tradesman. Down to about that time it had been customary for publicans to lend money on pledges that their customers might have the means of drinking, but the practice was at last stopped by act of parliament. Nor was respect for the honesty of the business increased by the attempt of "The Charitable Corpora tion" to conduct pawnbroking on a large scale. Established by charter in 1707, "this nefarious corporation," as Smollett called it, was a swindle on a large scale. The directors gambled wildly with the shareholders' money, and in the end the common council of the city of London petitioned parliament for the dissolution of this dishonest concern. When it collapsed in 1731 its cashier, George Robinson, M.P. for Marlow, and another principal official disappeared, less than 130,000 being left of a capital which had once been twenty times as much.
The pawnbroker's licence dates from 1785, the duty being fixed at L i o in London and L5 in the country; and at the same time the interest chargeable was set tled at 1% per month, the duration of loans being confined to one year. Five years later the interest on advances over £2 and under L Io was raised to 15%. The modern history of legislation affecting pawnbroking begins, however, when the act of i800 was passed, in great measure by the influence of Lord Eldon, who never made any secret of the fact that, when he was a young barrister without briefs, he had often been indebted to the timely aid of the pawn shop. The pawnbrokers were grateful, and for many years of ter Lord Eldon's death they continued to drink his health at their trade dinners. The measure increased the rate of interest to a half penny per half-crown per month, or fourpence in the pound per mensem—that is to say, 20% per annum. Loans were to be granted for a year, although pledges might be redeemed up to fifteen months, and the first week of the second month was not to count for interest. The act worked well, on the whole, for three quarters of a century, but it was thrice found necessary to amend it. Thus in 1815 the licence duties were raised to 115 and £7, los. for London and the country respectively; another act of 184o abolished the reward to the "common informer" for reporting illegal rates of interest; while in 186o the pawnbroker was em powered to charge a halfpenny for the pawn-ticket when the loan was under five shillings. As time went on, however, the main pro visions of the act of 1800 were found to be very irksome, and the Pawnbrokers' National Association and the Pawnbrokers' Defence Association worked hard to obtain a liberal revision of the law. It was argued that the usury laws had been abolished for the whole of the community with the single exception of the pawn broker who advanced less than £m. The limitations of the act of i800 interfered so considerably with the pawnbrokers' profits that, it was argued, they could not afford to lend money on bulky articles requiring extensive storage room. In 187o the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee on Pawnbrokers, and it was stated in evidence that in the previous year 207,780,000 pledges were lodged, of which between thirty and forty millions were lodged in London. The average value of pledges appeared to be about 4s., and the proportion of articles pawned dishonestly was found to be only I in 14,00o.