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 passed fixing arbitrary prices for
grain. For a time monopolies creating artificial prosperity were
granted to individuals and to corporations for the manufacture,
sale, or exploitation of certain articles, such as matches,
gunpowder, and playing-cards.

This highly artificial and paternalistic state was not content
with regulating all these internal matters but spread its
protection over foreign commerce. Navigation acts attempted to
monopolize the trade of the colonies and especially the trade in
the products needed by the mother country. England encouraged
shipping and during this period achieved that dominance of the
sea which has been the mainstay of her vast empire. She fostered
plantations and colonies not for their own sake but that they
might be tributaries to the wealth of the nation. An absurd
importance was attached to the possession of gold and silver, and
the ingenuity of statesmen was exhausted in designing lures to