Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/118

104 be to fix your standard. This would have to be done by the guild of every trade in its own manner, and within certain easily recognisable limits, and this fixing of standard would necessitate much simplicity in the forms and kinds of articles sold. You could only warrant a certain kind of glazing or painting in china, a certain quality of leather or cloth, bricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined mixture of meal. Advisable improvements or varieties in manufacture would have to be examined and accepted by the trade guild: when so accepted, they would be announced in public reports; and all puffery and self-proclamation, on the part of tradesmen, absolutely forbidden, as much as the making of any other kind of noise or disturbance.

79. But observe, this law is only to have force over tradesmen whom I suppose to have joined voluntarily in carrying out a better system of commerce. Outside of their guild, they would have to leave the rogue to puff and cheat as he chose, and the public to be gulled as they chose. All that is necessary is that the said public should clearly know the shops in which they could