Why They
Did Not Raise A Subscription To Drain The Marshes In The
Neighbourhood Of The City, And Thus Meliorate The Air, Which Is
Rendered Extremely Unwholsome In The Summer, By Putrid
Exhalations From Those Morasses?
I demanded of him, why they did
not contribute their wealth, and exert their political
refinements, in augmenting their
Forces by sea and land, for the
defence of their country, introducing commerce and manufactures,
and in giving some consequence to their state, which was no more
than a mite in the political scale of Europe? I expressed a
desire to know what became of all those sums of money, inasmuch
as there was hardly any circulation of gold and silver in Rome,
and the very bankers, on whom strangers have their credit, make
interest to pay their tradesmen's bills with paper notes of the
bank of Spirito Santo? And now I am upon this subject, it may not
be amiss to observe that I was strangely misled by all the books
consulted about the current coin of Italy. In Tuscany, and the
Ecclesiastical State, one sees nothing but zequines in gold, and
pieces of two paoli, one paolo, and half a paolo, in silver.
Besides these, there is a copper coin at Rome, called bajocco and
mezzo bajocco. Ten bajocchi make a paolo: ten paoli make a scudo,
which is an imaginary piece: two scudi make a zequine; and a
French loui'dore is worth two zequines and two paoli.
Rome has nothing to fear from the catholic powers, who respect it
with a superstitious veneration as the metropolitan seat of their
religion:
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