140 x 4 = 560 piccioli.
(= 28 lire di piccioli.)
Page 21
This established a considerable advantage, and turned the flow of silver back again to Florence.
The process might in many respects be compared to our raising of the bank rate, were it not that the two operations represent quite different and separated financial epochs. It is noteworthy, too, because the process will be found immediately imitated in both France and England, that these laws of 1345 represent preponderatingly the sense of the class of exchangers of Florence,—i.e. the financiers professed,—men who would profit individually in their exchange operations as much as the state would in its restored currency of silver. "The above lords," says the preamble to the first-cited Act, "considering the numerous petitions made to them by many artificers, merchants, and honourable citizens, of the incredible lack of silver money in the state of Florence, on account of which the citizens of the said state suffer many inconveniences and wants, have determined to have and have had counsel of the twenty-one guilds of the city, who have [by a roundabout method] chosen eight men, skilled and prudent in the aforesaid, who have had counsel with the officers of our Mint and with certain others of the trade of exchangers," etc., with such result as above.
Yet even so, the effort was only temporarily successful. Before two years was out the price of silver abroad, outside of Florence, had advanced to 12 lire 15 soldi a fiorino = 27 lire 14 soldi di piccioli, whereas the price fixed by a fresh Mint law of 1345 had Page 22 been again reduced to under 26 lire 10 soldi di piccioli. The result was a second melting down and disappearance of the silver coins of the state, a second agitation on the part of the Florentine woollen merchants, and renewed legislation.