Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/251

Rh many parliaments, that the procedure in private bills lias tended to assimilate itself more and more to an ordinary litigation. The committees are tribunals acknowledging certain rules of policy, and hearing evidence from witnesses and arguments from professional advocates. An important point in the history of this kind of legislation is marked by the three Consolidation Acts of 1845 (8 and 9 Viet.) The Companies Clauses Consolidation Act consolidates sundry provisions relating to the constitution and manage ment of joint-stock companies, usually introduced into Acts of Parliament authorizing the execution of undertakings of a public nature by such companies. The Lands Clauses Consolidation Act applies to undertakings authorized by special Act to take or purchase land. The Railways Clauses Consolidation Act applies to Acts authorizing the construction of railways. The clauses of the Consolidation Acts are to be taken as incorporated in a special Act of the class in question, unless they are expressly varied or excepted thereby. A further development of the same tendency may be observed in proposals which have been made from time to time to hand over the authority of Parliament, in relation to such companies, to a permanent tribunal.

Livery Companies.—These societies, now chiefly remark able as a feature in the municipal organization of London, belong to a class of institutions which at one time were universally prevalent in Europe. In most other countries they have disappeared ; in England, while their functions have wholly changed, the organization remains. The origin of the city companies is to be found in the craftgilds of the Middle Ages. The absence of a strong central authority, such as we are now accustomed to, doubtless accounts for thstendency to confederation in thebeginning of modern societies. Artificial groups, formed in imitation of the family, discharged the duties which the family was no longer able, and which the state was not yet able, to undertake. The inhabitants of towns were forced by external pressure into the societies known as gild- merchants, which in course of time monopolized the municipal government, became exclusive, and so caused the growth of similar societies among their excluded citizens. The craftgilds were such, societies, composed of handicrafts men, which entered upon a severe struggle for power with the earlier gilds and finally defeated them. The circum stances and results of the struggle are stated to have been of much the same character in England and on the Con tinent. In London the victory of the crafts is decisively marked by the ordinance of the time of Edward II., which required every citizen to bo a member of some trade or mystery, and by another ordinance in the 49th of Edw. III., which transferred the right of election of corporate officers (including members of Parliament) from the ward- representatives to the trading companies. Henceforward, and for many years, the companies engrossed political and municipal power in the city of London. The trading fraternities assumed generally the character of corporations in the reign of Edward III. Many of them had been chartered before, but their privileges, hitherto exercised only on sufferance and by payment of their terms, were now confirmed by letters patent. Edward III. himself became a member of the fraternity of Linen Armourers, or Merchant Taylors, and other distinguished persons followed his example. From this time forward they are called livery companies, &quot; from now generally assuming a distinctive dress or. livery.&quot; The origin of the Grocers Company is thus described : &quot;Twenty-two persons, carrying on the business of pepperers in Soper s Lane, Cheapside, agree to meet together, to a dinner, at the Abbot of Bury s, St Mary Axe, aad commit the particulars of their formation into a trading society to writing. They elect after dinner two persons of the company so assembled Roger Osekyu and Lawrence de Hallwell as their first governors or wardens, appointing, at the oanae time, in conformity with the pious custom of the age, a priest or chaplain to celebrate divine offices for their souls &quot; (Heath s Account of the Grocers Company,&quot; quoted in Herbert s Twelve Great Livery Companies, vol. i. p. 43). The religious observances and the common feasts were characteristic features of those institutions. They were therefore not merely trade unions in the current meaning of that phrase, but may rather be described as forms of industrial self-government, the basis of union being the membership of a common trade, and the authority of tha society extending to the general welfare, spiritual and temporal, of its members. It must be remembered that they flourished at a time when the separate interests of master and servant had not yet been created; and indeed, when that fundamental division of interests arose, the companies gradually lost their functions in the regulation of industry. The fact that the craftsmen were a homogeneous order will account for the wide authority claimed by their societies, and the important public powerr which were conceded to them. Their regulations, says Herbert, &quot; chiefly regarded the qualifications of members, keeping of their trade secrets, the regulations of apprentice ship and of the company s peculiar concerns, the domestic management of the fraternity and its funds, and the uniting together of it in brotherly love and affection. To these may be added, as forming a prominent feature in all the ancient communities, the regulation of their religious and other ceremonies.&quot; In the regulation of trade they possessed extensive powers. They required every one carrying on the trade to join the company. In the 37th of Edward III., in answer to a remonstrance against the. mischief caused by &quot; the merchants called grocers who engrossed all manner of merchandize veudable, and who suddenly raised the prices of such merchandize within the realm,&quot; it was enacted &quot; that all artificers and people of mysteries shall each choose his own mystery before next Candlemas, and that, having so cho;;en it, he shall hence forth use no other.&quot; Dr Brentauo (Oti Gilds) holds that it is wrong to represent such regulations as monopolistic, inas much as there was no question whatever of a monopoly in that time nor until the degeneration of the craftgilds into limited corporations of capitalists. In the regulation of trade the right of search was an important instrument. The wardens of the grocers are to &quot;assay en weights, powders, coufeccions, platers, oyntments, and all other things belong ing to the same crafte.&quot; The goldsmiths hud the assay of metals, the fishmongers the oversight of fish, the vint ners of the tasting of wine, &c. The companies enforced their regulations on their members by force. Many of their ordinances looked to the domestic affairs and private conduct of the members. The grocers ordain &quot; that no man of the fraternite take his neyghbor s house y l is of the same fraternite, or cuhaunce the rent against the will of the foresaid neyghbor.&quot; Perjury is to be punished by the wardens and society with such correction as that other men of the fellowship may be warned thereby. Members reduced to poverty by adventures on the sea, increased price of goods, borrowing and pledging, or any other misfortune, are to be assisted &quot; out of the common money, according to his situation, if he could not do without.&quot; Following what appears to be the natural law of their being, the companies gradually lost their industrial charac ter. The course of decay would seem to have been the following. The capitalists gradually assumed the lead in the various societies, and the richer members engrossed the power, and the companies tended to become hereditary and exclusive. Persons niiiHit be members who bad nothing to 