it is therefore ordained and enacted, by authority CH. I. of this present parliament, that every merchant now having, or which shall hereafter have, wines to be sold, and refusing to sell or deliver, or not selling and delivering any of the said wines for ready money therefore to be paid, according to the price or prices thereof being set, shall forfeit and Held guilty lose the value of the wine so required to be bought. meanour.

...

of misde

. . . For due execution of which provision, and for the relief of the king's subjects, it shall be lawful to all and singular justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head officers in shires, cities, boroughs, towns, &c., at the request of any person to whom the said merchant or merchants have refused to sell, to enter into the cellars and other places where such wines shall lie or be, and The civil to sell and deliver the same wine or wines desired aries may to be bought to the person or persons requiring to such wines, buy the same; taking of the buyer of the wine so ant sold to the use and satisfaction of the proprietor statute aforesaid, according to the prices determined by the law.'

The next which I select is the eleventh of the second and third of Philip and Mary; and falling in the midst of the smoke of the Smithfield fires, and the cruelties of that melancholy time, it shines like a fair gleam of humanity, which will not lose anything of its lustre because the evils against which it contends have in our times, also, furnished matter for sorrow and calamity-calamity which we unhappily have been unable even to attempt to remedy. It is termed 'An Act touching Weavers,' and runs:

function

seize all

and sell

price.

CH. I.

Act touch

ing weavers,

Philip and

of the

'Forasmuch as the weavers of this realm have, as well at this present parliament as at divers other times, complained that the rich and 2 and 3 of wealthy clothiers do in many ways oppress them Mary, c.11. -some by setting up and keeping in their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining them by journeymen and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which were brought up in the said science of weaving, with their Monopoly families and their households-some by engrossof looms by capitalists. ing of looms into their hands and possession, and letting them out at such unreasonable rents, as Sufferings the poor artificers are not able to maintain themworkmen. selves, much less to maintain their wives, families, and children-some also by giving much less wages and hire for weaving and workmanship than in times past they did, whereby they are enforced utterly to forsake their art and occupation wherein they have been brought up; It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it be not foreseen, The mono- ordained and enacted by authority of this present bited. parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making, and dwelling out of a city, borough, market-town, or corporate town, shall keep, or retain, or have in his or their houses or possession, any more than one woollen loom at a time; nor shall by any means, directly or indirectly, receive or take any manner of profit, gain, or commodity, by letting or setting any loom, or any house wherein any loom is or shall be used or occupied, which shall be together by

poly prohi

him set or let, upon pain of forfeiture for every CH. 1. week that any person shall do the contrary to the tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings.'

beings

A provision then follows, limiting weavers living in towns to two looms-the plain intention being to prevent the cloth manufacture from falling into the power of large capitalists employing 'hands;' and to enable as many persons as possible to earn all in their own homes their own separate independent living. I suppose that the parliament was aware that by pursuing this policy the cost of production was something increased; that cloth was thus made dearer than it would have been if trade had been left to follow its own course. It considered, however, that the loss was compensated to the nation by retaining its people in the condition not of 'hands,' but of Human men; by rendering them independent of masters, not to be who only sought to make their own advantage at treated as the expense of labour; and enabling them to continue to maintain themselves in manly freedom. The weak point of all such provisions did not lie, I think, in the economic aspect of them, but in a far deeper difficulty. The details of trade legis- of interlation, it is obvious, could only be determined by persons professionally conversant with those details; and the indispensable condition of success with such legislation is, that it be conducted under the highest sense of the obligations of honesty. No laws are of any service which are above the No system working level of public morality; and the deeper worked they are carried down into life, the larger become the opportunities of evasion. That the system level of

'hands.'

Inherent

weakness of the system

can be

above the

common

morality.

CH. I. succeeded for centuries is evident from the organization of the companies remaining so long in its vitality; but the efficiency of this organization for the maintenance of fair dealing could exist only so long as the companies themselves-their wardens and their other officials, who alone, quisque in suá arte, were competent to judge what was right and what was wrong-could be trusted, at the same time being interested parties, to give a disinterested judgment. The largeness of the power inevitably committed to the councils was at once a temptation and an opportunity to abuse those powers; and slowly through the statute book we find the traces of the poison as it crept in and in. Already in the 24th of Henry VIII., we meet with complaints in the leather trade of the frauFrauds of dulent conduct of the searchers, whose duty was

searchers.

to affix their seal upon leather ascertained to be sound, before it was exposed for sale, 'which mark or print, for corruption and lucre, is commonly set and put by such as take upon them the search and sealing, as well upon leather insufficiently tanned, as upon leather well tanned, to the great deceit Oppression of the buyers thereof.' About the same time, the tices. 'craft wardens' of the various fellowships, 'out of

of appren

sinister mind and purpose,' were levying excessive fees on the admission of apprentices; and when parliament interfered to bring them to order, they compassed and practised by cautill and subtle means to delude the good and wholesome statutes passed for remedy.'* The old proverb, Quis

* 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 4; 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 5.

custodiat custodes, had begun to verify itself, and CH. J. the symptom was a fatal one. These evils, for

fall of trad

the first half of the century, remained within compass; but as we pass on we find them increasing steadily. In the 7th and the 8th of Elizabeth, Decline and there are indications of the truck system; and ing virtue. towards her later years, the multiplying statutes and growing complaints and difficulties show plainly that the companies had lost their healthy vitality, and, with other relics of feudalism, were fast taking themselves away. There were no longer tradesmen to be found in sufficient numbers who were possessed of the necessary probity; and it is impossible not to connect such a phenomenon with the deep melancholy which in those years settled down on Elizabeth herself.

For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness