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simultaneously, one-third of the value being given in wine, which was generally watered. If the pledge were not redeemed within three months, the amount to be paid for getting it back was increased, and again at the end of the next three months, and so on, until,
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at the end of the year, the original sum lent was doubled. If it was not paid, the wine-seller had a right to sell the object for what it would bring.
A modern Eastern proverb says that one Greek can cheat any ten Jews, but that one Armenian can cheat ten Greeks. Considering that Venice had a distinctly oriental character during the Middle Ages, and since we know that the small money-lending wine-sellers were not Jews, I suspect that they were principally Greeks and Armenians, the more probably so as we know that great quantities of Greek and Armenian wine were imported into Venice, and that those wines will bear a good deal of watering. The latter is an important point, for it is manifest that when the pledge was redeemed within the first three months, the lender’s profit was the difference between the nominal and the real value of the wine which formed one-third of the loan.
The government which tolerated this ignoble occupation exhibited the most extraordinary prejudice against the government pawnbroking offices which were common in other Italian cities. Historians have in vain endeavoured to discover why this prejudice went so far that, in 1524, the Council of Ten published a decree threatening with death on the scaffold any one who should even propose the creation of such an establishment. Without entering into any ingenious speculation, it seems possible that the Venetians, who were wise if not virtuous, considered that while it was impossible to prevent the poor from borrowing small sums on their little possessions, to authorise such borrowing by making the government the lender would greatly increase the temptations of that more shiftless class to whom borrowing seems to be a prime necessity of existence.
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