Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/135

Rh the kingdlom was a proper subject of legislation, and had necessarily engaged attention long before this date; although, at a period when science was unknown, the methods resorted to were necessarily very inartificial, and sometimes singular enough; Henry I., for example, soon after he came to the throne, in ordaining that the ell or yard should be of uniform length throughout the kingdom, could find no better standard for it than the length of his own arm. It might also have been found expedient, both for fiscal and other purposes, to direct that all cloth made for sale within the kingdom should be of certain specified dimensions; regulations to that effect have at least been usual down to our own day. But it was to stretch legislation on such matters beyond all reasonable limits to attempt to fix a measure for the cloth made in all foreign countries. Such a law, in so far as it was enforced, could only have the effect of diminishing the supply,—in other words, of raising the prices of foreign goods. But, like most of the other absurd restrictions of the same character, the maintenance of this regulation was soon found to be impracticable: if it had been rigorously insisted upon, it would have excluded the manufactured goods of certain foreign countries from the English market altogether; and accordingly, after giving a great deal of useless annoyance both to foreign merchants and their English customers, and after special exemptions from it had been granted to several nations, it was at last repealed by the 27 Edw. III. st. 1, c. 4, passed in 1353, which provided that, "whereas the great men and commons have showed to our lord the king how divers merchants, as well foreigners as denizens, have withdrawn them, and yet do withdraw them, to come with cloths into England, to the great damage of the king and of all his people, because that the king's aulnager surmiseth to merchant strangers that their cloths be not of assize," therefore no foreign cloths should in future be forfeited on that account, but, when any was found to be under assize, it should simply be marked by the aulnager, that a proportionate abatement might be made in the price.

This was also the era of various statutes against the