Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/290

 274, the etablihment of public marts, or places of buying and elling, uch as markets and fairs, with the tolls thereunto belonging. Thee can only be et up by virtue of the king's grant, or by long and immemorial uage and precription, which preuppoes uch a grant. The limitation of thee public reorts, to uch time and uch place as may be mot convenient for the neighbourhood, forms a part of economics, or dometic polity; which, conidering the kingdom as a large family, and the king as the mater of it, he clearly has a right to dipoe and order as he pleaes.

, the regulation of weights and meaures. Thee, for the advantage of the public, ought to be univerally the ame throughout the kingdom; being the general criterions which reduce all things to the ame or an equivalent value. But, as weight and meaure are things in their nature arbitrary and uncertain, it is therefore expedient that they be reduced to ome fixed rule or tandard: which tandard it is impoible to fix by any written law or oral proclamation; for no man can, by words only, give another an adequate idea of a foot-rule, or a pound-weight. It is therefore neceary to have recoure to ome viible, palpable, material tandard; by forming a comparion with which, all weights and meaures may be reduced to one uniform ize: and the prerogative of fixing this tandard, our antient law veted in the crown; as in Normandy it belonged to the duke. This tandard was originally kept at Wincheter: and we find in the laws of king Edgar, near a century before the conquet, an injunction that the one meaure, which was kept at Wincheter, hould be oberved throughout the realm. Mot nations have regulated the tandard of meaures of length by comparion with the parts of the human body; as the palm, the hand, the pan, the foot, the cubit, the ell, (ulna, or arm) the pace, and the fathom. But, as thee are of different dimenions in men of diffe- Rh