GILD REGULATION. 459 



the powers they had bought, and tacitly proceeded upon 

 the maxim that the right to labour was a gild-right which 

 the gild might sell and the affiliated citizen might purchase 

 by payments and services. 



792. Progressive differentiation, with consequent in 

 creasing heterogeneity, characterized subsequent stages. 

 Once practically coextensive with the free townsmen but 

 presently growing distinct, the merchant-gild itself was 

 eventually replaced by minor combinations of kindred na 

 ture the craft-gilds. Several influences united to generate 

 them. Guided by such evidence as Eastern countries now 

 furnish, and by home evidence which the names of streets 

 given in Anglo-Saxon times still yield, we have inferred that 

 in very early days there existed localized clusters of kindred 

 carrying on particular occupations. This implies that when 

 all the traders of a town formed one gild, there were included 

 in it different groups of artificers, each of which had within 

 itself, if not an overt union, still a tacit union. It is a reason 

 able inference that from the outset these component groups, 

 some of them larger and some of them smaller parts of the 

 gild, did not cooperate with entire harmony. Hence, from 

 the beginning, a nascent tendency to separate. 



While towns were small, and these components groups 

 severally contained few members, the general union was 

 maintained; and it continued even after there had arisen a 

 caste-division between the employers, equivalent to mer 

 chants, and the employed or working craftsmen. But when 

 there arose large places the internal jealousies among gild- 

 members, operating alike between the castes and the com 

 ponent groups in each caste, began to tell ; and each of the 

 groups, now relatively numerous and powerful, tended to 

 assume independence. This tendency was furthered by 

 another. 



With increased urban growth the business of administra 

 tion, whether by the municipal government or by the 



