And the history of banking has been the same.

The first banks were not founded for our system of deposit banking, or for anything like it.

They were founded for much more pressing reasons, and having been founded, they, or copies from them, were applied to our modern uses.
The earliest banks of Italy, where the name began, were finance companies.

The Bank of St.George, at Genoa, and other banks founded in imitation of it, were at first only companies to make loans to, and float loans for, the Governments of the cities in which they were formed.

The want of money is an urgent want of Governments at most periods, and seldom more urgent than it was in the tumultuous Italian Republics of the Middle Ages.