culties in making them remunerative, and the check which pauperism received during the earlier part of the eighteenth century can hardly be ascribed to their influence. It was more probably due to the improved agricultural conditions of that time, which removed some of the causes of poverty, and to the demand which arose for able-bodied labour in the

American colonies. These circumstances, together with the general stringency of administration which came into fashion, kept down the evil in a somewhat ruthless way, but towards the end of the century, there was a reaction in favour of a more generous treatment of the poor. This found expression in Gilbert's Act in 1782, and still more in the action of the justices who in 1795 granted allowances from the rates to supplement the income of labouring families.

60. Allowances

The circumstances which called forth this disas

and the new

trous measure have been described above (p. 86), but a wool famine which occurred about Poor Law. the same time threw many spinners out of employment, or forced them to work at unremunerative rates. The allowances seem to have been an expedient for giving a temporary substitute in lieu of the earnings of women and children. But as domestic spinning never revived, this temporary measure came to be a permanent institution, and during the first thirty years of the present century outdoor relief was largely given in forms which tended to foster a pauper class.

These various evils were so crying that a drastic measure of reform was rendered necessary in 1834. A central board was created, which exercised wide control and gave a more uniform character to the administration of poor relief in different districts. It was a time of great national distress, both rural and urban, and the new authority carried out its first reforms under adverse circumstances. But it has suc

ceeded in abolishing the worst abuses of the old days. If national poor relief is unsympathetically given and unthankfully received, it is at least less harsh and less pauperising than it was at various times in the eighteenth century.

tion.

61. National organisation has come into vogue in another direction to provide facilities for in- Internal ternal communication. This was recognised communicaas a national duty from the earliest times as part of the trinoda necessitas; but it had, in all probability, more reference in those days to military than to commercial convenience. Throughout the Middle Ages and indeed until the reign of Queen Mary the repair of the roads appears to have been left to private munificence. It was an object to which the charitable devoted money in their wills, and to which the monasteries in their more prosperous days gave considerable attention. When Parliament took the matter up, it supplemented rather than superseded the action of local authorities. As in the case of poor relief, the ecclesiastical organisation was used as the agent for effecting this important piece of civil work. Each parish was rendered responsible for the care of its roads, while the justices were called upon to exercise a general supervision and to see that the parochial authorities did their duty. Increased prosperity in the eighteenth century rendered improved roads a commercial necessity. A General Highway Act was passed (1741), and the principle was adopted of collecting tolls, so that those who used the roads might contribute to their repair. The immediate effect of this measure was surprising; in the early part of the eighteenth century English roads had been disgracefully bad, but before its close they had attained to a very high standard of excellence.

and cloth.

62. From a very early time the central government devoted some attention to the quality of Quality and price of bread goods and to the regulation of fair prices. The necessaries of life first received consideration. According to the Assize of Bread already referred to (p. 72), efforts were made to devise a self-acting system, which should prove fair both to producers and to consumers by providing sufficient remuneration for the baker and his men, while it secured that the public should obtain loaves of the right size and weight for their money; the loaf was to be larger or smaller according as corn was cheap or dear. The due execution of this Assize and the effective punishment of those who infringed it was part of the ordinary duties of manorial and other local courts. As it was one of the earliest, so also was it a long-continued piece of national regulation. Early in the eighteenth century (1709) it was re-issued in more modern phraseology, and in 1757, when the harvest had failed, the London magistrates tried to carry out this policy stringently. The results were, however, sufficiently disastrous to prove conclusively that the time had gone by when such measures could be advantageously enforced.

The next great department in which we hear of national regulation was in regard to clothing. A royal official, the aulnager, was appointed, whose business it was to see that the cloth exposed for sale was of the proper length and breadth. At first his attention was partly given to imported cloth, but there are indications that he was also called upon to supervise the product of English looms. There were various towns which got into trouble for stretching their cloth unduly, and the aulnager's seal was intended to be a guarantee that the cloth was of sufficient size and weight, and to render it acceptable to consumers either at home or abroad.

The traditional character and objects of the insti

tution are perhaps most easily seen in the time of Charles II, when attempts were made to foster a clothing trade in Ireland. The appointment of an aulnager in that country in 1665 appears to have been regarded as a step of first importance, if there was to be successful competition with the established industries of other lands. And though English economists and politicians took measures to repress this growing industry, the aulnager and his salary survived.

With the steady growth of the English cloth manufacture the duties of the aulnager must have become more and more complicated. There are complaints from Norfolk of the exactions of this officer in 1328, and there were special difficulties when Flemish weavers, accustomed to different measurements, settled in this country in the time of Edward III. The variety which had been introduced into the trade is most clearly reflected in the legislation of Edward IV, which enumerates a large number of cloths of different sizes and qualities, made in various parts of the country. From this time, legislation affecting the quality and weight of cloth was very frequent; the various measures are enumerated in the statute of 1809 which repealed them all. At this date all such attempts at regulation were discredited; Englishmen were pushing their trade in all parts of the world, and it was not desirable to define too rigidly the character of the goods made for so many markets. To have maintained the old rules would have hampered manufacturers in catering for public taste. There was no longer the same necessity to preserve these rules as a security for quality, since a new guarantee was afforded by manufacturers' trade-marks. While cloth was made on the domestic system, such marks could not become a well-known guarantee, but under the system of factory-production, the trade-marks of the large houses came to be widely known, and their reputation

H

served, to some extent, to warrant the character of the goods that they supplied.

Patents and

63. There were, especially during the Stuart period, various other instances in which the supervimonopolies. sion of a certain department was entrusted to particular officials; this was attempted in the case of alehouses, gold lace and gunpowder. A more common expedient was that of granting special privileges for this purpose to a body of persons thoroughly acquainted with, and actually engaged in, some trade, who could effectively bring home responsibility for defects to particular persons. Some of the London companies, like the Tanners, acquired an extensive right of search of this kind, while others had reserved to them exclusive rights of production. This method of granting exclusive privileges by patent gave rise to much dissatisfaction in the time of Elizabeth and to gross abuses under James I. In both these cases, however, it might be claimed that the intentions of the Crown were disinterested, but that the public were badly served by the patentees or their agents. Under Charles I the system received a new development, when he granted exclusive patents for the production of some articles of common consumption. Thus he hoped to secure a revenue, similar to an excise, by granting a patent for soap. It was carefully devised so as to evade the terms of the statute of 1624, but the indignation, which it aroused, rendered it impossible for Charles to proceed, while it brought the whole of this system of national regulation into discredit. 64. National regulation had, however, served a useful purpose in various ways. English kings were, from a very early time, alive to the importance of trying to plant new industries within the realm. It was under the shelter of royal

Alien workmen. Incorporated Companies.