Page:Man or the State.djvu/58

40 treasury, its sworn organisation? For the statesmen this was "a State within the State." The State was bound to destroy the guilds and it destroyed it everywhere: in England, in France, in Germany, in Bohemia, preserving only the semblance of the guild as an instrument of the exchequer, as a part of the vast administrative machine.

And should we be astonished that guilds, trade-unions, and wardenships, deprived of everything that was formerly their life and placed under royal functionaries, became in the eighteenth century nought but encumbrances and obstacles to the development of industry, after having been the very life of progress four centuries before? The State had killed them. In fact it did not content itself with destroying the autonomous organisation which was necessary for the very life of the guilds and impeded the encroachments of the State; it did not content itself with confiscating all riches and property of the guilds: it appropriated for itself all their economical functions as well.

In a city of the Middle Ages, when interests conflicted in a trade, or when two guilds disagreed, there was no other appeal than to the city. They were forced to settle matters, to find some compromise, as all guilds were mutually allied in the city. And a compromise was always arrived at,—by calling in another city to arbitrate, if necessary. Henceforth, however, the only arbitrator was the State. All local disputes, sometimes of the most insignificant kind, in the smallest town of a few hundred inhabitants, had to be piled up in the shape of useless documents in the offices of king and parliament. We see the English parliament literally inundated with these thousands of petty local squabbles. It then becomes necessary to have in the capital thousands of functionaries (venal for the greater part) to classify, read, judge all these documents, to pass judgment on every detail: to regulate the way to forge a horseshoe, bleach linen, salt herrings, make a barrel, and so on ad infinitum,—and the tide still rose!

But this was not all. Soon the State laid hands on exportation. It saw in this commerce a means of enrichment, and seized upon it. Formerly, when a dispute arose between