perty, the owner let the house, paid the
interest on the mortgage out of the rent and pocketed the difference, as
clear gain. In the majority of eases it was the bank itself which sold
the lot of land to the speculator. It is clear therefore that the only
money which actually changed hands was that advanced in small sums by
the bank itself.

As the speculation increased, the banks could not of course afford to
lock up all the small notes of hand they received from various quarters.
This paper became a circulating medium as far as Vienna, Paris and even
London. The crash came when Vienna, Paris and London lost faith in the
paper, owing, in the first instance, to one or two small failures, and
returned it upon Rome; the banks, unable to obtain cash for it at any
price, and being short of ready money, could then no longer discount the
speculator's further notes of hand; so that the speculator found himself
with half-built houses upon his hands which he could neither let, nor
finish, nor sell, and owing money upon bills which he had expected to
meet by giving the bank a mortgage on the now valueless property.

That is what took place in the majority of cases, and it is not
necessary to go into further details, though of course chance played all
the usual variations upon the theme of ruin.

What distinguishes the period of speculation in Rome from most other
manifestations of the kind in Europe is the prominent part played in it
by the old land-holding families, a number of which were ruined in wild
schemes which no sensible man of business would have touched. This was
more or less the result of recent changes in the laws regulating the
power of persons making a will.

Previous to 1870 the law of primogeniture was as much respected in Rome
as in England, and was carried out with considerably greater strictness.
The heir got everything, the other children got practically nothing but
the smallest pittance. The palace, the gallery of pictures and statues,
the lands, the villages and the castles, descended in unbroken
succession from eldest son to eldest son, indivisible in principle and
undivided in fact.

The new law requires that one half of the total property shall be
equally distributed by the testator amongst all his children. He may
leave the other half to any one he pleases, and as a matter of practice
he of course leaves it to his eldest son.

Another law, however, forbids the alienation of all collections of work