356 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



robbers stand to plunder the hard-won earnings 

 of those who till the earth. 



In a Free Trade country where we boast of 

 having few tariffs, and laugh at the octroi 

 exacted on farm produce as it enters a French 

 town, we have by Act of Parliament created a 

 monopoly in market-places which in turn sets 

 up an internal tariff as grievous as any octroi 

 endured by the French peasant. 



" Notwithstanding," says Mr. A. C. Wilkins, 

 the well-known fruit-grower and jam-maker, 

 "the enormous growth of trade induced by 

 the railways, there appears to be no greater 

 number of markets in London than there were 

 two or three centuries ago. The Encyclopcedia 

 Biitannica gives the names of the eleven 

 markets existing in the time of Stowe the 

 chronicler, which correspond nearly Avith the 

 eleven at present existing, and continues: ' Since 

 the removal of Hungerford JSIarket to make 

 way for Charing Cross station, Covent Garden 

 has remained the only vegetable and flower 

 market of importance in the INIetropolis, 

 although vegetables of a cheap kind are sold in 

 the Boro' and at Spitalfields, also at Farringdon 

 Road and the Great Northern Railway. ... In 

 1328, a Charter was granted to the Corporation 



