Towards Della Moneta (1743–1750)

Chapter 3 addresses the issue of monetary stabilisation in a context like the Kingdom of Naples, located on the periphery of the world-economy, with social structures still predominantly feudal, where the merchant class was weak, agriculture was in a state of subsistence, industrial activities were almost non-existent and Spanish fiscal policy had impoverished state finances. The monetary problems that plagued the Kingdom throughout the seventeenth century fostered copious literature on the government of money and other economic issues. Neapolitan culture therefore had a marked sensitivity to economic problems and this weighed heavily in its ability to receive and elaborate on the principles of monetary stabilisation. Rejecting en bloc the model of economic policy proposed by Melon was Carlo Antonio Broggia, who was linked to the anti-Cartesian philosophy of Paolo Mattia Doria and Giambattista Vico. Broggia’s work was later extensively used for the treatment of monetary policy by the Modenese historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori in his treatise Della Pubblica Felicità. Muratori, who combated the amorality of politics, also regarded the maintenance of the standard as part of the good Prince’s duties. Needless to say, the great fortune that Muratori’s work enjoyed in Italian reformist culture contributed in no small measure to the spread of the concept of stabilisation among Italian intellectuals. The defence of stable money was also supported by the aristocratic Trojano Spinelli, who had no direct affinity with the philosophical approach of Doria and Vico, and indeed was extremely familiar with the work of Locke.