reputation with posterity more than anything else was the plundering of the before-mentioned _Monte delle doti_, the establishment intended for the dowries of maidens, and in which all citizens, great and small, were wont to make investments.[384] It was a sort of bank of deposit, somewhat on the plan of modern insurance-offices, and its usefulness was increased by the changes of fortune only too sudden in Florence. This establishment took its rise in 1424, when it was decreed that for the liquidation of the shares in the national debt dating from 1325 to 1336, and originally bringing in eighteen per cent. interest, the creditors should be at liberty to convert a quota of what was due to them into a dowry for their sons and daughters; from 1468 it was limited to daughters. The conditions were very liberal. Whosoever paid or gave security for the amount of 104 gold florins, and had it put down to one of his children, received at the end of fifteen years the sum of a thousand florins in cash, or could, if he pleased, let it remain at five per cent. interest. If the child in whose name the money stood died, half the sum to which he would have had a claim, according to the time that had elapsed, was paid back to the father, and the other half went to the bank. The so-called reform of the _Monte delle doti_, which, like all such establishments, certainly needed improvement in its administration, was one of the avowed objects of the change made in the constitution in 1480; but it opened a door to the misappropriation of its funds. In 1485 a decree was issued whereby only a fifth of the dowry, i.e. two hundred florins in the case above described, was to be paid in cash; the rest was to be entered in a register called _libro non ito_, the unpaid book, and to bear an interest of seven per cent. This was not all. Six years later, the rate of interest was lowered to three per cent.[385] This came very near to bankruptcy, and this bankruptcy touched the citizens to the quick, while it brought the State into discredit. Hitherto the dower paid through the Monte had in most cases been sufficient; now the necessary additions to it became serious, and quite unattainable for many families. So the number of marriages diminished; that the consent of the head of the State had to be secured before they could take place would sound incredible, did it not belong to the system of such party-government.[386] ‘For many years,’ says Rinuccini,[387] ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici was doing his best, by a series of laws and decrees, to ruin the great bank of the commonwealth, for the purpose of getting rid of its obligations for the payment of annuities and dowries, and obtaining arbitrary control over the State finances. For this work he selected in particular two helpers, Antonio di Bernardo and Ser Giovanni of Pratovecchio (chancellor of the Riformagioni), worthless fellows, who pointed out to him day by day the way to attain his object.’