That the seventeenth century saw the true genesis of many of our commercial and financial institutions is suggested by the fact that their names first appear at this time. Such are _capital_, which is a doublet of _cattle_—the very oldest Aryan form of wealth[19]—_commercial_, _discount_, _dividend_, _insurance_, _investment_, and lastly the modern meaning of _bank_, which, like the names of so many protective and responsible institutions—the _Assizes_, the _Bench_, the _Consulate_, the _Council_, the _Chair_ at a public meeting, a _Seat_ in Parliament, and the _Throne_—is based etymologically on what we may call one of the oldest and safest of human occupations. The old Teutonic word which subsequently became modern English _bench_ was adopted into Italian, probably from the Teutonic Lombards of northern Italy, in the form ‘banco’. It soon acquired the special sense of a moneychanger’s ‘bench’ or table and found its way, together with the object it represents, into most of the countries of Europe. Thus, like the name _Lombard Street_, the little word carries us back with it to the origin of banking in northern Italy and to Edward I’s substitution of Italian _bankers_ for Jewish moneylenders. _Bankruptcy_, _currency_, and _remittance_ appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century, and in the second _bonus_, _capitalist_, _consols_, and _finance_. The history of _finance_ is again interesting. The word goes right back to the Latin ‘finis’ (end). When it first appeared in English, it had the sense of a ‘fine’ or forfeit, but its modern significance was developed in eighteenth-century France among the tax-farmers or ‘financiers’, as they were called, to whom the king delegated the duty of collecting his taxes. As time went on, these shrewd individuals amalgamated into a sort of limited company, which, by a judicious application of the principles of usury, gradually gained more and more control over the revenue, until “toutes les finances du royaume”, as Voltaire says, “dépendirent d’une compagnie de commerce”. In England the phrase _Bank of England_ first appears in 1694, describing a body of individuals associated for the purpose of lending money to the Government; and about thirty years later this still (1925) outstanding loan began to be known as the _National Debt_.