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TJrdahl—Historical Survey of Fee Systems. 
D. RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF SOME OF THE EARLY FEES. 
The conditions existing in the earlier settlements made some 
legislative enactments have greater significance than they have 
at present. The modern method of building durable fences 
so rapidly and cheaply, for example, had not been invented. 
Large commons, where cattle were turned out to pasture, exist¬ 
ed in all the original states. The owners of cultivated fields 
were therefore in some localities compelled by law to fence 
them. This often meant an enormous amount of work, and 
even after the fields had been fenced, cattle would at times 
break through the inclosures; in such cases the question of 
damages resolved itself into whether the fence was legal or not. 
Fence-viewers were therefore appointed in almost every county 
to inspect and pronounce upon the various fences in dispute. 
These officers were usually paid by fees which were of no minor 
importance in the estimation of the colonists. An examination 
of any of the early statutes will show a large percentage of acts 
which relate to the subject of preventing swine from running 
at large. Now one township, now another is brought under 
this interdiction. After such an act had been passed, all swine 
found at large were liable to be impounded and held by the 
pound master until his fees were paid. Poundage fees were 
thus no insignificant item to the early farmers, for the same 
reason that at present they are of considerable importance in 
the more newly settled agricultural districts of the West. 
E. INSPECTION FEES. 
The legislation which most distinctly manifests the tendency 
toward state intervention on the part of the early common¬ 
wealths, is the inspection laws of this period. 1 These, many 
of them, had their origin in the economic needs or necessities of 
the colonial period. The people were living in a truck economy. 
The scarcity of money made it necessary to pay debts in com¬ 
modities. Under such circumstances it was just as much to the 
Maryland required the inspection of hides, leather, lime, lumber, 
shingles, plaster of Paris, flour, salted fish, coal, etc. Laws , 1813-1832. 
