San Marino¶

San Marino is a republic older than most of the states around it and enclosed on every side by one of them. It has few offices, and between a request from abroad and the answer there may be a single desk. The weakness is scale. A state this small cannot keep its own lists or check other people’s, and is likely to inherit its neighbour’s habits along with its banks’ correspondents. Whatever reaches Rome is likely to reach San Marino a little later, without a debate of its own.

The clerk’s briefs¶

From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes

Nothing to read. Residents and banks here would feel a neighbour’s decisions without having had a say in them, and a single desk would decide how to apply them.

Nothing filed yet¶

The clerks have found no development in the period that bears on the steps of the historical record. The hinge they would watch is the neighbour’s habit, inherited.