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The bankruptcies came to us from Italy, bancorotto, bancarotta, gambarotta e la giustizia non impicar. There was nothing to be said to him, his bench was broken, banco rotto, banca rotta; he could even, in certain towns, keep all his property and baulk his creditors, provided he seated himself bare-bottomed on a stone in the presence of all the merchants.
Another reflection too occurs as curious; that after the overthrow of all business, all knowledge, and all pleasure resulting from either, by the Goths, Italy should be the first to cherish and revive those money-getting occupations, which now thrive better in more Northern climates: but the chymists say justly, that fermentation acts with a sort of creative power, and that while the mass of matter is fermenting, no certain judgment can be made what spirit it will at last throw up: so perhaps we ought not to wonder at all, that the first idea of banking came originally from this now uncommercial country; that the very name of bankrupt was brought over from their money-changers, who sat in the market-place with a bench or banca before them, receiving and paying; till, unable sometimes to make the due returns, the enraged creditors broke their little board, which was called making bancarotta, a phrase but too well known in the purlieus, which because they first settled there in London was called Lombard Street, where the word is still in full force I believe.
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