oa. As a security, at least, for their
interest, the subscribers to public loans were permitted to receive the
produce of the taxes by their own collectors, paying the excess into the
treasury. The number and distinct classes of these subscribers becoming
at length inconvenient, they were formed, about the year 1407, into a
single corporation, called the bank of St. George, which was from that
time the sole national creditor and mortgagee. The government of this
was intrusted to eight protectors. It soon became almost independent of
the state. Every senator, on his admission, swore to maintain the
privileges of the bank, which were confirmed by the pope, and even by
the emperor. The bank interposed its advice in every measure of
government, and generally, as is admitted, to the public advantage. It
equipped armaments at its own expense, one of which subdued the island
of Corsica; and this acquisition, like those of our great Indian
corporation, was long subject to a company of merchants, without any
interference of the mother country.[646]

[Sidenote: Increase of domestic expenditure.]

The increasing wealth of Europe, whether derived from internal
improvement or foreign commerce, displayed itself in more expensive
consumption, and greater refinements of domestic life. But these effects
were for a long time very gradual, each generation making a few steps in
the progress, which are hardly discernible except by an attentive
inquirer. It is not till the latter half of the thirteenth century that
an accelerated impulse appears to be given to society. The just
government and suppression of disorder under St. Louis, and the
peaceful temper of his brother Alfonso, count of Toulouse and Poitou,
gave France leisure to avail herself of her admirable fertility.
England, that to a soil not greatly inferior to that of France united
the inestimable advantage of an insular position, and was invigorated,
above all, by her free constitution and the steady industriousness of
her people, rose with a pretty uniform motion from the time of Edward I.
Italy, though the better days of freedom had passed away in most of her
republics, made a rapid transition from simplicity to refinement. "In
those times," says a writer about the year 1300, speaking of the age of
Frederic II., "the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife
ate off the same plate. There was no wooden-handled knives, nor more
than one or two drinking cups in a house