AND ON THE CONTINENT.

27

A similar institution controlled the English woollen industry.There existed offices for the inspection of woollen goods in Man-chester, Rochdale, , Blackburn, and Bury (12).

Josiali Child gives (in his “ New Discourse of Trade,’’ London ,1693, p. 130) a view of the trade privileges which he had alreadyopposed, and which regulated the woollen industry. Accordingto him, the sort and quality of the cloth was exactly specified bylaw, so that "loyal cloth” might be produced. Deviations weresettled by the inspecting offices. It was also defined up towhat length a certain piece of cloth might be stretched. Clothfulfilling the lawful conditions was marked with the magisterialseal, and every infringement of the existing regulations waspunished. In addition to this, the law fixed the number of theworkpeople and of the looms which one weaver might employ—that is, as by the aforementioned German law, it fixed a limitof production in the interests of property-equalisation. Theauthor mentioned demands, instead, that a faculty inspectionshould displace the obligatory; everybody should be able tomake cloth to his own. mind, but only the cloth produced andexamined according to regulations should receive the official sealand so go abroad on the “ public good faith of England .” Onthe other hand, Child is in favour of retaining definite bureau-cratically controlled length-measurements of all cloth which wasdestined for export. Therefore, even an unquestionable reformerasks to what extent the old arrangement should be limited, as infact this gradually occurred during the last century, especially bymeans of the movement of the industry from the towns to thecountry.

Whilst the woollen industry, therefore, only gradually loosenedthe bonds of the older trade-privileges, the cotton industry wasa new trade, just brought into the country, which the State, inprotection of the older industry, handled with disfavour. Whilstthe one was helped forward by all the means possible—the lawis known according to wliich no dead should be laid in the gravewithout a woollen shroud—the cotton industry was hamperedwith import duties only repealed by Sir Robert Peel (after apartial repeal, 1787, 1798); with prohibition of printed calicoes;later, in place of these, loaded with heavy taxes on its use (thelatter only repealed in 1831). In spite of which it was not thewoollen but the cotton industry whose wonderful unfolding wasto create the greatness of England .

12 Compare Ure : “ The Cotton Manufacture,” I. p. 187.