Three things, said Messer Bevigliano, hinder us Italians from doing our best for the community: the licensing system, 'tied-houses,' and labour difficulties. I should be the last to suggest the abolition of our picturesque custom in use when an inn is to be let. At the auction a candle is lighted: the highest bid before the candle goes out wins the business. But the periods of tenancy, one and six years, alternately, in Florentine territory, are inconvenient. Far worse, however, are the prices extorted, especially from those who keep inns outside the gates of towns, the use of which is so necessary to such as are compelled to arrive late, or wish to leave early. Even apart from these, the majority pay 100-150 crowns (£150-£225 present value) for their licenses; some 500 or 600. At Venice wine-shops and inns pay 1000 crowns. The proportion this bears to the rent may be judged from the case of an old widow I know 8 miles from Florence whose rent was 23 crowns and whose license was 56. Another inn, kept by a shoemaker, a freehold house worth 6 crowns a year, pays 20 crowns for license, while the other license, for shoemaking, only costs a Giulio and a half.
What I mean by a 'tied' house is one which belongs to the owner of a large estate who allows nothing to be sold there except the produce of that estate.
Lastly, as to labour, the custom of the country is against the use of women-servants, against even the host's wife and daughter assisting him. What, Messer Bevigliano concluded, apart from ordinary routine-work, would happen to your Fair at Mülhausen if there were no girls to serve the drinks?
Next came Francisco Marques of Alicante, well known to sailors of every nationality. What he laid most stress on has in the main been anticipated by Charles II and Lady Fanshawe, but he supplemented it as follows: In the towns clean and comfortable beds were to be had, with meals ready. Many _posadas_, he admitted, provided nothing but utensils, table-linen, oil, salt, vinegar; yet travellers were then neither better nor worse off than in Poland, Bohemia, and Picardy, where the custom was likewise. As for the wayside inns which gave nothing but a roof and horse-provender, they barely existed outside Castile and Aragon, and there the wayfarer should prepare accordingly, as the Spaniard did, who journeyed with a bag full of provisions on each side of the saddle and a bottle of wine to each bag. As to the supposed lack of meat, he went on, most Spaniards are vegetarians; and considering the achievements of the Spanish infantry, I do not think any one can find fault with the principle. Neither does this apply to the lower classes only, for we have a rhyme which says:—