182 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



by the West India sugar interests. The economic and social effects 

 of such license system are subjects in the arena of present-day disputa- 

 tion and pohtics. The result, so far as the middleman was concerned, 

 was to reduce the number of shop-keepers, eliminating the smaller 

 shops, and to concentrate the trade in the hands of the fewer larger 

 retailers. 



ACCESSORY TRADES. 



(a) Wines. 



Wines were an imported commodity. France, Portugal and Spain 

 suppUed England with the greater part. The Liber Albus enumerates 

 Malvesie, Vernage, Crete, Provence, Romaney , Rhenish and Red wines, 

 as sold in the London taverns at the opening of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury. They were sold only in draught.^ At this time it appears that 

 the keepers of the ale-houses were distinct from the wine-taverners 

 and they were quite likely prohibited from selling each other's com- 

 modity." In the city there were a l:)ody of "wine-drawers" whose 

 business was limited to the loading, carriage and unloading of tuns 

 and pipes of wine from the Quay sellers to other parts of the city. 

 There were ordinances prescribing their charges according to weight 

 and distance.' In the time of Sir Walter Raleigh, according to the 

 Avine licenses he was empowered to issue, maximum prices were fixed 

 at which French and other \Aines might be retailed; while others as 

 muscatel a taverner might s'ell "at his . . . moste profite and 

 commoditie." The wines of Spain, Italy and Greece were permitted 

 to be sold at higher prices than the French. It appears that some 

 Spanish wines were received through Holland where they were 

 adulterated."* 



International policy interfered much with the wine trade. Pro- 

 hibition of the wine-trade was a miUtary weapon. During wars with 

 France encouragement was given to the Spanish and Flemish wines 

 and impositions were put on the French.'' The shifts in the volume 

 of trade occasioned by the English-French tariff war between 1664 

 and 1713 were most marked, Portugal's trade increasing or decreasing 

 with every change upward or downward of the French tariffs.*^ The 



1 Lib. Mh. I, LXIV. 



- Ibid., LXI. 



■■' Ibid., LXV, 526. 



^HaU, Eliz. Soc, 77. 



' Ibid., 78. 



«See statistics, British Mercliant, I, 302; 307, 319. 



