English Gilds.*

Mary already indicates the commencement . After stating that " the rich clothiers do oppress the weavers , some by setting up and keeping in their houses divers looms , and maintaining them by j ourneymen and other persons unskilful ; some

by engrossing of looms into their hands , and letting them out at such unreasonable rents as the poor artificers are not able to maintain themselves by , and much less their wives and families ; some again by giving much less wages for the

workmanship of cloth than in times past , whereby they are forced utterly to forsake their occupations , & c . ; it is enacted that no clothier , living out of a city , ^ urg h , or market-town , shall keep more than two looms , nor more than two apprentices , " & c . In

short , the Act endeavours to protect the small masters against the competition of the rich capitalists . But neither this Act nor all the other

attempts of the corporations could restrain the process of development , which , especially in consequence of a series of technical discoveries , threw manufacture altogether into the hands of the large capitalists . Handicrafts , and the corporations

together with them , lost continually in importance , and only made themselves hated ancl despised in their endeavour to arrest the natural progress of events . I need not enter into the details of these

excesses of the craft g ilds ; for as the merits of the following system consisted chiefl y in these faults of the former , and as in consequence of this peculiar kind of merits the followers of the new era were not restrained by modesty from selfpraise , the craft gilds , faults are universally known . These excesses caused the removal of the trades

carried on under the new system , to places free from the influence of corporate control . Birmingham , Manchester , and other p laces of kindred note , owe to this their career of prosperity , which was soon to leave the ancient cities and boroughs

far behind . The competition of the great industries rising in the new cities deprived the old corporations of their real essence , by making the attainment of their chief objects illusory , and thus turned them into mere empty shadows of

their previous grandeur . In France the sovereign people finally swept the corporations away in the night of the 4 th August , 1789 . In Germany , several bureaucratic enactments brought them piecemeal to death , and the last remnants were

destroyed b y the North German Industrial Code of 1869 . In England they died out gradually before the newly-rising Great Industry ; and all

English Gilds.*

that remains of the ancient gilds in the livery companies of to-day , is the common eating and drinking - . Yet in England there grew up successors to the old g ilds , in the trade-unions of working men ,

which , like the first g ilds of the old freemen , sprang up as a defence against the great capitalists , who , ever like the strong , competed with each other at the expense of the weak . ( To be continued . )

Our Masonic Charities.

OUR MASONIC CHARITIES .

ROYAL MASONIC INSTITUTION FOE Boxs . ( Continued from page 205 . ) The address given was reprinted and published with the Rules and List of Donors in the year 1812 , one year antecedent to that in which the union of the two

Grand Lodges holding divided sway over the Craft in this country was happily effected . From it will be gathered the objects of the founders of the Institution , and attention is particularly directed to that portion in which mention is made of the intention ' ' to

purchase or build a suitable school-house , '' as evidencing that what has recently been effected is only giving effect to the original design . No further illusion thereto appears in any Report until that of 1851 , when the project was resuscitated by a few earnest friends of the Institution , to whom the spread of the educational

movement throughout the country suggested tho necessity of measures calculated to ensure its proper position in an age of general progress , and who felt that no adequate improvement could be effected until a homo was

provided wherein the boys might lie brought under a well organised system , and their health , comfort , and habits more carefully attended to than was possible under the limited supervision to which they had hitherto been subjected . The appeals addressed from , time to time to the Craft in pursuance of this project

having been liberally responded to , a convenient mansion and ten acres of freehold land at Wood Green were purchased in the year 1856 , for the sum of £ 3 , 500 * The building , after some alteration , was inaugurated as as School in the year 1857 , twenty-five boys being admitted The experiment—for such it was—afforded general

satisfaction , and the Brethren continuing their liberality , the Oommitte were enabled to add to , and improve , tho then existing accomodation , so that in the year 1859 they were in a position to offer the benefits of a home and a school in which they would be maintained , clothed , and educated , to the seventy boys who had been

elected . The offer was accepted by tho parents of sixtyeight of the boys , two preferring that their sons should bo still educated as before ; the rules specially providing