47. The United States possess superior local advantages for trade, and embrace a population unsurpassed for enterprise and energy. Since the Revolution, the resources of our country have been rapidly developing. Our exports and imports are already next in amount to those of Great Britain and France and the extensive improvements which have been made by the different states, to facilitate internal intercourse, are increasing with great rapidity.
48. The banking system is very intimately interwoven with commercial affairs in general. Banks are of three kinds, viz., of _discount_, of _deposit_, and of _circulation_. The term _bank_, in its original application, signified a place of common deposit for money, and where, in commercial transactions, individuals could have the amount, or any part of the amount, of their deposits transferred to each other's accounts.
49. The term _bank_ is derived from the Italian word _banco_, which signified a kind of bench, or table, on which the Jews were accustomed to place the money which they proposed to lend in the markets of the principal towns. The first bank was established in Venice, about the middle of the twelfth century; the Bank of Genoa, in 1345; the Bank of Amsterdam, in 1607; the Bank of Hamburg, in 1619; the Bank of Rotterdam, in 1635. These were all banks of mere deposit and transfer.
50. _Lending-houses_ may be traced to a very ancient origin. They were, at first, supported by humane persons, with a view of lending money to the poor, on pledges, without interest. Augustus Cæsar appropriated a part of the confiscated effects of criminals to this purpose; and Tiberias, also, advanced a large capital, to be lent for three years, without interest, to those who could give security in lands equal to twice the value of the sum borrowed.
51. In the early ages of Christianity, free gifts were collected and preserved by ecclesiastics, partly to defray the expenses of divine service, and partly to relieve the poor of the church; and the funds thus provided came, at length, to be called _montes pietatis_--mountains of piety. This appellation was afterwards applied to the _loaning-houses_, established in modern Italy in imitation of those of antiquity.