Free The Belly of the Bow by K. J. Parker Page B

became a bank and lent the pioneers everything they needed - it couldn’t be an outright gift, everybody agreed, because if they gave away their endowment to this generation of the poor, who would provide for the next generation, and the one after that? - and the loans were secured on the allotments of land that the pioneers were given.
    Of course, it was understood from the outset that it would be a very long time before they’d be able to pay back the capital of the loans, but that was fine, nobody was in a hurry provided that the Foundation still got enough resources to continue its work in both its fields of endeavour, charity and contemplation. So it was decided that repayment of the capital would be postponed indefinitely, and all the pioneers would be expected to pay would be interest; and to make it fairer still, the interest wouldn’t be calculated in the normal way, as a percentage of the capital, because that might prove more than the pioneers could afford. Instead it was agreed that after the first five years, by which time the land ought to be ready and in production, they should pay back a set proportion of everything they produced - so much grain, so much wine and wool and what have you. In the end they settled on a seventh part, because it seemed reasonable to expect surpluses of that order from half-decently run holdings. And everybody concerned felt that that was an extremely good idea; quite possibly the best yet.
    (Gorgas Loredan paused and took a long drink; then he wiped his mouth and continued.)
    A hundred years later, of course, the full extent of the disaster was obvious to everyone. Three generations had gone by and none of the pioneer families had even made a start on paying back the capital; the one-seventh share they had to pay the Foundation Bank exactly cancelled out their surpluses, and no matter how hard they worked they were still stuck at subsistence level with no prospect of ever being able to improve their position. Meanwhile, there was a constant stream of produce flowing in through the gates of the Hospital which couldn’t just be left to moulder away in the jar; it had to be lent out to the poor, or else the whole charter of the Foundation would become meaningless. So lend it out they did; and anyone who didn’t want a loan was reasoned with until he did, because the books had to balance and the good works had to be done. And what with the new loans and the general effect all this was having on the people who weren’t debtors to the Foundation, who had to buy their seed corn in bad years out of their own pockets and pay for their own ploughs and do their ditching and terracing at their own expense, it wasn’t long before the Foundation Bank had mortgage stones in nearly every boundary wall in the peninsular, and more and more funds coming in each year to be invested in charity, or else.
    That was when the first debtors’ revolt broke out, and the Foundation couldn’t understand it. So they asked their scholars and moral philosophers, who’d had plenty of time to think about these things and came back with the reply that human nature is basically rotten, being prey to ingratitude and envy and sheer abstract malice, and the more you help people, the more resentful and ungrateful they get. And when that happens, the philosophers said, all you can do is treat them as you’d treat spoilt and spiteful children, and give them a good thrashing for their own good. Otherwise, they argued, the Foundation would be failing in its quasi-parental duty towards the people it had adopted, and for whose welfare it was entirely responsible.
    Now the debtors (by this time they’d started being known as heptemores, which is the word for ‘seventh-parters’ in the old language) had plenty of men and idealism, but no weapons or resources to sustain a war; and when they showed up outside the Hospital gates they found that the Foundation, which by this state was calling itself the Grand Foundation