They
also receive a licence to hold a weekly market, and possibly a yearly fair as
well; it is agreed that all disputes of traders, which arise in fair or market,
shall be decided according to the law of merchants, the general usage of the commercial
world; and a safe-conduct is granted to all strangers who resort to either
gathering for lawful purposes. At first the tolls of the fair and market are
collected by the lord, and the law-merchant is administered in the court of his
bailiff. Often, however, he ends by leasing both the tolls and the commercial
jurisdiction to the townsmen.
When they are permitted (as in Flanders and in
England) to form a merchant-gild, it is with this body that such bargains are
concluded; and the gild usually purchases from the lord a quantity of other privileges - the
monopoly of certain staple industries in the town and neighbourhood; rights of
pre-emption over all imported wares; and the power of making by-laws to
regulate wages, prices, the hours of labour, and the quality of manufactured
goods. Where the lord is a sovereign prince, he is often induced to make
concessions of a wider scope: freedom from inland tolls and from customs at the
seaports; the right of making reprisals upon native and foreign enemies who rob
the merchants or infringe the privileges of the town; immunity, in civil suits,
from every jurisdiction but that of the town-court.
