"[63]
Such is an outline of the organisation of English society under the
Plantagenets and Tudors. A detail of the working of the trade laws would be
beyond my present purpose. It is obvious that such laws could be enforced
only under circumstances when production and population remained (as I said
before) nearly stationary; and it would be madness to attempt to apply them
to the changed condition of the present. It would be well if some competent
person would make these laws the subject of a special treatise. I will run
the risk, however, of wearying the reader with two or three illustrative
statutes, which I have chosen, not as being more significant than many
others, but as specimens merely of the discipline under which, for
centuries, the trade and manufactures of England contrived to move; showing
on one side the good which the system effected, on the other the inevitable
evils under which it finally sank.
The first which I shall quote concerns simply the sale of specific goods
and the means by which tradesmen were prevented from enhancing prices. The
Act is the 6th of the 24th of Henry VIII., and concerns the sale of wines,
the statute prices of which I have already mentioned.
"Because," says this Act, "that divers merchants inhabiting within the city
of London have of late not only presumed to bargain and sell in gross to
divers of the king's subjects great quantities of wines of Gascony,
Guienne, and French wines, some for five pounds per tonne, some for more
and some for less, and so after the rate of excessive prices contrary to
the effect of a good and laudable statute lately made in this present
parliament; that is to say, contrary to and above the prices thereof set by
the Right Honourable Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Lord President of the
King's most honourable Council, Lord Privy Seal, and the two Chief Justices
of either bench, whereby they be fallen into the penalties limited by the
said statute; as by due proof made by examination taken is well known--but
also having in their hands great abundance of wine, by them acquired and
bought to be sold, obstinately and maliciously, since their said attemptate
and defaults proved, have refused to bargain and sell to many of the king's
subjects any of their said wines remaining and being in their hands;
purposing and intending thereby their own singular and unreasonable lucres
and profits, to have larger and higher prices of their said wines, to be
set according to their insatiable appetites and minds; it is therefore
ordained and enacted, by authority 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 lose the value of the wine so
required to be bought.
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