Page:History of england froude.djvu/82

60 system succeeded for centuries is evident from the organization of the companies remaining so long in its vitality; but the efficiency of this organization for the maintenance of fair dealing could exist only so long as the companies themselves—their wardens and their other officials, who alone, quisque in suâ arte, were competent to judge what was right and what was wrong—could be trusted, at the same time being interested parties, to give a disinterested judgment. The largeness of the power inevitably committed to the councils was at once a temptation and an opportunity to abuse those powers; and slowly through the statute book we find the traces of the poison as it crept in and in. Already in the 24th of Henry VIII., we meet with complaints in the leather trade of the fraudulent conduct of the searchers, whose duty was to affix their seal upon leather ascertained to be sound, before it was exposed for sale, 'which mark or print, for corruption and lucre, is commonly set and put by such as take upon them the search and sealing, as well upon leather insufficiently tanned, as upon leather well tanned, to the great deceit of the buyers thereof.' About the same time, the 'craft wardens' of the various fellowships, 'out of sinister mind and purpose,' were levying excessive fees on the admission of apprentices; and when parliament interfered to bring them to order, they 'compassed and practised by cautill and subtle means to delude the good and wholesome statutes passed for remedy.' The old