As early as 1839 Carlo Cattaneo warned, in his review Il Politecnico, that “paper money must not be issued except on behalf of the State, and that, with all the rigorousness and all the  1  Banca d’Italia (1961), Abridged version of the Report for the year 1960, “Concluding Remarks”, 111.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  solemnity of laws and fundamental orders, its quantity must be made proportionate to needs, that is, to the volume of transactions.”2 It was not until 1893 that the Bank of Italy was founded, with the main task of centralizing the function of note issuance, which until then had been distributed among six local banks.