Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/122

 their town was "right well maintained," asserting further that "evil disposed persons" resident in the vicinity had begun to do similar work to the injury of their town, an Act of Parliament ordered that all hemp grown within five miles of the town of Bridport should be sold only in that town, and that no person within the same distance from that highly favoured seaport should manufacture any hempen goods under pain of forfeiting what they had manufactured! The first principles of sound political economy being then unknown, class interests, as a natural consequence, were protected either by the help of favoured corporations, under royal charters, or by special enactments.

Of these some still survive to remind us of a period in the history of England when the favoured few had means placed at their disposal of accumulating wealth denied to the great mass of the community. Although most of these charters are now objects of no value except to satisfy the curiosity of antiquaries, others remain vesting their possessors with a power which, if ever it did, can no longer render any public service. For centuries the vast organisation of these companies penetrated the entire trading life of England. Laws were framed to protect them in all their operations, and to provide that no person should supply articles he had not been educated to manufacture, nor any manufacturer be permitted to sell what he had produced on the best terms he could obtain: the Legislature also decided for him the price at which each article was to be sold.

In London, a control council in communication with