heir charters, insuring political and
economic freedom, gave them superior advantages for trading.

The guild system of manufacture was gradually replaced by the domestic
system. The workman's cottage, standing in its garden, housed the loom
and the spinning wheel, and the entire family was engaged in labor at
home. But the workman, thus apparently independent, was not the owner
of either the raw material or the finished product. A middleman or agent
brought him the wool, carried away the cloth, and paid him his hire.
Daniel Defoe, who made a tour of Britain in 1794-6, left a picture of
rural England in this period, often called the golden age of labor. The
land, he says, "was divided into small inclosures from two acres to six
or seven each, seldom more; every three or four pieces of land had an
house belonging to them,...hardly an house standing out of a speaking
distance from another.... We could see at every house a tenter, and on
almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or shalloon.... At every
considerable house was a manufactory.... Every clothier keeps one
horse, at least, to carry his manufactures to the market and every one
generally keeps a cow or two or more for his family. By this means the
small pieces of inclosed land about each house are occupied, for they
scarce sow corn enough to feed their poultry .... The houses are full of
lusty fellows, some at the dye vat, some at the looms, others dressing
the clothes; the women or children carding or spinning, being all
employed, from the youngest to the oldest."

But more significant than these changes was the rise of the so-called
mercantile system, in which the state took under its care industrial
details that were formerly regulated by the town or guild. This system,
beginning in the sixteenth century and lasting through the eighteenth,
had for its prime object the upbuilding of national trade. The state,
in order to insure the homogeneous development of trade and industry,
dictated the prices of commodities. It prescribed the laws of
apprenticeship and the rules of master and servant. It provided
inspectors for passing on the quality of goods offered for sale. It
weighed the loaves, measured the cloth, and tested the silverware. It
prescribed wages, rural and urban, and bade the local justice act as a
sort of guardian over the laborers in his district. To relieve poverty
poor laws were passed; to prevent the decline of productivity corn laws
were pas