DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0192
176 INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
ciations had no earlier existence. In London they were probably
as old at least as the time of Longbeard, in the days of Richard I.
It is certain that the City guilds were in existence as more or less
irregular associations long before the earliest charters which they
possess. But prominence is given them in the earliest struggles
between employers and workmen. A grotesque antiquity is given
to that modern association, which under the name of freemasonry
is, I believe, justly associated with nothing" but high feeding and
benevolence. The student of social forces discovers its origin in
those congregations, chapels, and conventions of free masons, against
which the Lancastrian kings denounced the penalties of felony.
The form of the institution, as far as an outsider can judge, has
greatly changed. No doubt the modern craft is as unlike the
proscribed association of the Middle Ages as a City company in
its modern shape is to the artisans and shopkeepers who founded
the worshipful guilds of mercers and goldsmiths, tailors and
grocers, fishmongers and haberdashers, and I know not what.
The industrial life of England down to the Reformation, es-
pecially that carried out by Somerset, was one especially of trade
combinations. The system was so powerful and so universal that
the legislature was wholly unable to grapple with it. It broke
down under a set of circumstances which I have often described,
and was rapidly extirpated, under these new conditions, by the
law of 1563. From that date to 1825 the trades union was
effectually proscribed, and I am persuaded that the memory of
the ancient system, once so universal and so vigorous, had
entirely passed away, till at last an antiquarian economist, as I
suppose I may call myself, rediscovered it, and traced it back to
its early activity and esficiency. I will not say that what I found
out entirely changed my views as to those relations of labour and
capital which I have found in the earlier economists, but I gained
an insight into bygone conditions, in which a substantial deference
to the claims of labour was, as I found, not incompatible with
general and even national prosperity. The conclusions at which
I arrived were by no means weakened, as I followed up the
consequences of the Act of 1563, and traced the growing misery
of the Avorkman from the middle of the sixteenth century down
to almost recent experience, long after the repeal of the old labour
ciations had no earlier existence. In London they were probably
as old at least as the time of Longbeard, in the days of Richard I.
It is certain that the City guilds were in existence as more or less
irregular associations long before the earliest charters which they
possess. But prominence is given them in the earliest struggles
between employers and workmen. A grotesque antiquity is given
to that modern association, which under the name of freemasonry
is, I believe, justly associated with nothing" but high feeding and
benevolence. The student of social forces discovers its origin in
those congregations, chapels, and conventions of free masons, against
which the Lancastrian kings denounced the penalties of felony.
The form of the institution, as far as an outsider can judge, has
greatly changed. No doubt the modern craft is as unlike the
proscribed association of the Middle Ages as a City company in
its modern shape is to the artisans and shopkeepers who founded
the worshipful guilds of mercers and goldsmiths, tailors and
grocers, fishmongers and haberdashers, and I know not what.
The industrial life of England down to the Reformation, es-
pecially that carried out by Somerset, was one especially of trade
combinations. The system was so powerful and so universal that
the legislature was wholly unable to grapple with it. It broke
down under a set of circumstances which I have often described,
and was rapidly extirpated, under these new conditions, by the
law of 1563. From that date to 1825 the trades union was
effectually proscribed, and I am persuaded that the memory of
the ancient system, once so universal and so vigorous, had
entirely passed away, till at last an antiquarian economist, as I
suppose I may call myself, rediscovered it, and traced it back to
its early activity and esficiency. I will not say that what I found
out entirely changed my views as to those relations of labour and
capital which I have found in the earlier economists, but I gained
an insight into bygone conditions, in which a substantial deference
to the claims of labour was, as I found, not incompatible with
general and even national prosperity. The conclusions at which
I arrived were by no means weakened, as I followed up the
consequences of the Act of 1563, and traced the growing misery
of the Avorkman from the middle of the sixteenth century down
to almost recent experience, long after the repeal of the old labour