[] Id. p. 163.
[x] Marina, Ensayo Historico-Critico, p. 143.
[y] Martenne Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i. p. 984.
[z] Velly, t. iv. p. 136.
[a] The city of Cahors, in Quercy, the modern department of the Lot, produced a tribe of money-dealers. The Caursini are almost as often noticed as the Lombards. See the article in Du Cange. In Lombardy, Asti, a city of no great note in other respects, was famous for the same department of commerce.
[] There were three species of paper credit in the dealings of merchants: 1. General letters of credit, not directed to any one, which are not uncommon in the Levant: 2. Orders to pay money to a particular person: 3. Bills of exchange regularly negotiable. Boucher, t. ii. p. 621. Instances of the first are mentioned by Macpherson about 1200, p. 367. The second species was introduced by the Jews, about 1183 (Capmany, t. i. p. 297); but it may be doubtful whether the last stage of the progress was reached nearly so soon. An instrument in Rymer, however, of the year 1364 (t. vi. p. 495), mentions literæ cambitoriæ, which seem to have been negotiable bills; and by 1400 they were drawn in sets, and worded exactly as at present. Macpherson, p. 614, and Beckman, History of Inventions, vol. iii. p. 430, give from Capmany an actual precedent of a bill dated in 1404.
[c] Usury was looked upon with horror by our English divines long after the Reformation. Fleury, in his Institutions au Droit Ecclésiastique, t. ii. p. 129, has shown the subterfuges to which men had recourse in order to evade this prohibition. It is an unhappy truth, that great part of the attention devoted to the best of sciences, ethics and jurisprudence, has been employed to weaken principles that ought never to have been acknowledged.
One species of usury, and that of the highest importance to commerce, was always permitted, on account of the risk that attended it This was marine insurance, which could not have existed, until money was considered, in itself, as a source of profit. The earliest regulations on the subject of insurance are those of Barcelona in 1433; but the practice was, of course, earlier than these, though not of great antiquity. It is not mentioned in the Consolato del Mare, nor in any of the Hanseatic laws of the fourteenth century. Beckman, vol. i. p. 388. This author, not being aware of the Barcelonese laws on this subject published by Capmany, supposes, the first provisions regulating marine assurance to have been made at Florence in 1523.
[d] Macpherson, p. 487, et alibi. They had probably excellent bargains; in 1329 the Bardi farmed all the customs in England for 20l. a day. But in 1282 the customs had produced 8411l., and half a century of great improvement had elapsed.
[e] Villani, 1. xii. c. 55, 87. He calls these two banking-houses the pillars which sustained great part of the commerce of Christendom.