Nature and Ethics by F. David Peat.Paper given to Centromarca; Italy association of leading brand names."When, in the late 17th Century, bankers, merchants and shippers met in Edward Lloyd's Coffee House they carried out their transactions based on the principle of "my word is my bond". Indeed in English law a verbal agreement, sealed by a handshake, was legally binding, the written contract being only a memorandum of what had been agreed upon by both parties. This was the world analyzed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo in their theory of the market place. It was a market, as Ernesto Illy has often pointed out, based on three invisible pillars of Trust, Honesty and Respect, ethical principles that were taken for granted in that period".