insignia, and how they came to be possessed of broad lands and Church preferments, few people now care to think or to inquire. Trade and traders have no dignity any more in the eyes of any one, except what money lends to them; and these outward symbols scarcely rouse even a passing feeling of curiosity. And yet these companies were once something more than names. They are all which now remain of a vast organization which once penetrated the entire trading life of England—an organization set on foot to realize that most necessary, if most difficult, condition of commercial excellence under which man should deal faithfully with his brother, and all wares offered for sale, of whatever kind, should honestly be what they pretend to be.[1] I spoke of the military principle which directed the distribution and the arrangements of land. The analogy will best explain a state of things in which every occupation was treated as the division of an army; regiments being quartered in every town, each with its own self- elected officers, whose duty was to exercise authority over all persons professing the business to which they belonged; who were to see that no person undertook to supply articles which he had not been educated to manufacture;
- ↑ It has been objected that inasmuch as the Statute Book gives evidence of extensive practices of adulteration, the guild system was useless, nay, it has been even said that it was the cause of the evil. Cessante causa cessat effectus;—when the companies lost their authority, the adulteration ought to have ceased, which in the face of recent exposures will be scarcely maintained. It would be as reasonable to say that the police are useless because we have still burglars and pickpockets among us.
