for retail
trade, as the life of Godric shows us, is left to the rural peddlers. It
is in gross that they export and import wine, grain, wool, or cloth. To
convince ourselves of this we need only examine the regulations which
have been preserved to us. The statutes of the Flemish hanse of London,
for example, formally exclude retail dealers and craftsmen from the
company.

Moreover, the merchant associations of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries have nothing exclusively local in their character. In them we
find bourgeoisie of different towns, side by side. They have rather the
appearance of regional than of urban organisms. They are still far from
the exclusivism and the protectionism which are to be shown with so much
emphasis in the municipal life of the fourteenth century. Commercial
freedom is not troubled by any restrictive regulations. Public authority
assigns no limits to the activity of the merchants, does not restrict
them to this or that kind of business, exercises no supervision over
their operations. Provided they pay the fiscal dues (_teloneum,
conductus_, etc.) levied by the territorial prince and the seigneurs
having jurisdiction at the passage of the bridges, along the roads and
rivers, or at the markets, they are entirely free from all legal
obstacles. The only restrictions which hinder the full expansion of
commerce do not come from the official authority, but result from the
practices of commerce itself. To wit, the various merchant associations,
gilds, hanses, etc., which encounter each other at the places of buying
and selling, oppose each other in brutal competition. Each of them
excludes from all participation in its affairs the members of all the
others. But this is merely a state of facts, resting on no legal title.
Force holds here the place of law, and whatever may be the differences
of time and of environment, one cannot do otherwise than to compare the
commerce of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to that bloody
competition in which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
sailors of Holland, England, France, and Spain engaged in the markets of
the New World. We shall conclude then that medieval commerce, at its
origin, is essentially characterized by its regional quality and by its
freedom. And it is not difficult to understand that it was so, if one
bears in mind two facts to which attention should be drawn.

In the first place, down to the end of the twelfth century, the number