much as possible, so as to leave less room for arbitrary demands and unreasonable rates.

Prices assigned by common estimation would sometimes be high and sometimes low, according as an article was plentiful or not; the just price varied from time to time for such commodities. Nor was

it unjust for a man to sell an article for more than he had paid for it as its just price, if there had been a change of circumstances such a change of time or place that he deserved remuneration for some trouble in connexion with transport or for other service rendered. But it was unjust to try to get an arbitrary price, that is, to try to form a ring, or to speculate on the possibilities of the future in such a way as to be able to demand an extortionate price. If we allowed ourselves to be guilty of the anachronism of trying to summarise mediaeval doctrine in modern terms, we should say that they thought it unjust to sell without conscious reference to what is now called the cost of production. It was impossible for them to give a positive justification for the profit of the man who bought to sell again; all that moralists could say was that under certain circumstances it was not wrong to do so, and practical men kept a suspicious eye on the dealings of middlemen.

See also 348. Competition and Fair Price.

60. CONTROL BY PUBLIC AUTHORITIES

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The public authorities were not content with having provided society with the mere instruments of exchange; with the growing trade of the thirteenth century they felt themselves bound to regulate every sort of economic transaction in which individual self-interest seemed to lead to injustice. This regulation was guided by the general principle that just or reasonable price only should be paid, and only such articles sold as were of good quality and correct measure. Most of the enactments and rules were aimed at preventing some particular form of fraud, usually in some particular article; and no hard and fast line can be drawn between the action of the central authority and that of local authorities of town or gild. Still, some of the regulations were Adapted by permission from W. J. Ashley, An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory: The Middle Ages, pp. 181-204. (Longmans, Green, & Co., 1892.)

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of the nature of general rules of trade, and some commodities were felt to be of such general importance as to make it necessary for the Government to give special attention to them. It will be convenient to follow this division in describing the measures in question.

The rules of most far-reaching consequence were those prohibiting the allied practices of forestalling, engrossing, and regrating terms which came later to have a separate meaning, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seem to have been used as synonymous for any action which prevented goods from being brought by the producer 'or bona fide merchant to open market-the forestaller or engrosser buying them wholesale, either outside the town or in the market itself, and then securing by means of monopoly a higher price than would otherwise have been paid.

Among other methods of forestalling, ordinances of the same period especially mention those who buy wares in a town before the hour fixed for the opening of the market, and those in ports who go out to ships laden with merchandise as they enter and "do buy the merchandise in gross and then do sell them at greater and dearer prices than the first merchants would do, to the grievance of the common people." In the later years of Edward III the prohibition of forestalling was again and again renewed by statute.

wares.

The prohibition, it is clear from the wording of the statutes, had primary reference to those who endeavoured to secure local and temporary monopolies of the supply of food, especially of corn, though it was wide enough to cover all similar attempts with other We do not interfere with such speculation now, not from any belief in the usefulness of such speculation, but only because we do not believe it can, to any large extent, succeed. But the very attempt is still regarded with general disapprobation, and there are signs that "corners" would not be uninterfered with by the State if they were successful with any commodity of great social importance. During the Middle Ages it may be said that economic conditions were such that individuals could, if unrestrained, control or get into their power the supply of commodities. It must be remembered that the supply, in the case of corn and other food stuffs, was necessarily a local one. Then came centuries during which supply was furnished from so many directions that individuals could not control it. At the present time, with the increasing centralization of business and facility of communication, it seems to be again becoming possible for individuals to control the supply, not, as in the fourteenth century, of a

town only, but of the civilized world. And if such attempts succeed, we may come to look upon mediaeval legislation with somewhat more sympathy.

Of all articles bread is that in the price of which the community. is most interested. Hence, it was the very first to be directly dealt with by the Government. It did not seem possible to fix an unalterable price for corn. The men of the time might perhaps have argued that if the agriculturist gave each year the same amount of labour to his land he ought to receive much the same reward, and this could not be unless he got a higher price when the harvest was deficient: All that the legislation we have just noticed attempted to do was to prevent any speculation in corn and any unnecessary interference of middlemen.

And accordingly, in limiting the price of bread, it was not attempted to establish an invariable standard, but only a sliding scale, according to which the weight of the farthing loaf should vary with the price of the quarter of wheat. Such an Assize of Bread was first proclaimed in 1202, coming in natural sequence after Henry II's reformation of the coinage and Richard I's assize of measures.

From bread the legislator naturally turned his attention to the other necessary of mediaeval life, ale.

In curious contrast with its anxiety about the price of bread the central Government left the regulation of the price of meat entirely to the local authorities, contenting itself with the enactment that butchers selling unwholesome meat should be severely punished. In London the butchers were under the supervision of wardens, whose duty it was to bring unwholesome meat before the mayor and aldermen. The accused had the right of demanding "inquisition" by a jury into the character of the meat; and if it was condemned, he was punished by being put into the pillory and having the meat burnt before his face. The municipal authorities also, at least as early as the later years of Edward I, fixed maximum prices for the carcasses of oxen, cows, sheep, and pigs.

The town magistrates, indeed, were not less anxious than were Parliament and the ministers to keep the trade in articles of food under due control. Besides carrying out the assizes of bread, ale, and wine, they issued ordinances regulating the prices of poultry and fish, appointing the markets at which each sort of food was to be sold, and providing for their supervision. Accounts of punishments inflicted on persons selling unwholesome food form a very considerable part of the town records.

Among craftsmen, some

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ners subject to regulation by the town magistrates. ney were such as had no fixed shops, but moved about from place to place to perform particular pieces of work, "carpenters, masons, plasterers, daubers, tilers, and the servants of such."

There were, however, but few other cases in which the municipal authorities attempted to regulate wages or prices before the middle of the fourteenth century. It will be well, for the present, to confine ourselves to the period preceding the Black Death and to leave the question as to what effect that calamity had upon industrial policy to a later section. No doubt the town magistrates claimed the right to regulate wages when they thought proper, and this right they occasionally exercised, e.g., in London, to regulate blacksmiths' charges for shoeing horses. This was a matter in which a traveller in a hurry might be at the mercy of a blacksmith. So also the charges to be made by curriers and leather-dressers were limited. But, as a rule, the price of manufactured goods seems to have been left to be determined by the rules of the gilds; the limitation in London of the price of spurs by civic ordinance is an almost solitary example to the contrary. Unfortunately, we have too little evidence to be able to speak with confidence as to how the gilds regulated prices. In many crafts the artisan did not purchase the material himself, but received it from a customer to be made up, and received a payment for his service: these payments in each craft were doubtless fixed by custom and common consent, and overcharges seem to have been punished. The amount of remuneration when the artisan only did the work and did not provide the material would doubtless help to determine the price to be paid for an article when it was bought ready made. The weak point in the system was that when once the gilds became firmly established they tended to limit their numbers and to raise prices.

The direct action of the Government influenced the economic life of society in many other respects, both in the way of facilitating trade, and also by limiting it in certain directions. Of these limitations the most important was the prohibition of usury.

Lastly, mention must be made of the great service which the Government rendered to commerce and trade by the establishment of a simple procedure to enforce the payment of ordinary mercantile debts. This was by the Statute of Merchants or of Acton Burnell in 1283.

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The first strictly economic duty undertaken by the Central Government was the provision of currency and regulation of weights and measures. At the time of the Conquest and from that date until the thirteenth century the only coins struck were silver pence. Early in the thirteenth century round halfpence and farthings were issued, divisionary currency having previously been made by the people for themselves by halving and quartering round pence. The issue of gold coins by Henry III was premature. Their value was too great for them to be convenient. It was not until the reign of Edward III that the currency problem was complicated by the double standard.

Four conditions need to be fulfilled if a country is to secure a satisfactory current coin, where the problem is complicated by international trade. First, the right of coinage must be monopolised by some central authority; second, that authority must abstain from falsifying the currency; third, the technique of coining must be adequate to prevent either the circulation of false money or the deliberate debasing of true money; fourth, machinery must be provided for withdrawing automatically from circulation those coins which are lightened by wear. In the period under consideration the two first of these conditions were fulfilled, the two last were not.

Next in importance to the issue of a national currency comes regulation of weights and measures. As early as the reign of Edgar we find it enacted that weights and measures should everywhere be the same as at London and Winchester; but little was done, apparently, to enforce uniformity before the reign of Richard I.

No less important was the part played by the Crown in providing the necessary legal status for domestic and foreign trade. Apart from the enforcing of law and order two points require consideration: first, the part played by the Crown in the maintenance of trade routes; second, in the growth of interlocal exchange.

1. During these centuries the most important trade routes were old Roman and pre-Roman roads and navigable rivers. Coasting trade generally, and in particular the carriage of coal from Newcastle to London and to the ports on the South coast, was only slightly developed at the beginning of the reign of Edward I. For the maintenance of roads little was done at this or any other time before the eighteenth century.

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Adapted by permission from H. O. Meredith, Outlines of the Economic History of England, pp. 62-68. (Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1908.)