KltOPOTKIN ,a "military defender"-a prince or duke, who is chosen by the city for a year and whom it can dismiss when it pleases, It usually delivers, up to him the produce of judicial fines for the maintenance of his• soldiers; but it forbids him to interfere in the business of the city. Or, lastly, too feeble to emancipate itself entirely from its neighbours.,. the feudal vultures, the city will retain a bishop or a prince as a more or less permanent military protector, but it will watch with jealousy that his authority shall not extend beyond the soldiers encamped in the· castle. It will even forbid them to enter the town without permission. Even at the present day the King of England cannot enter the city of London without the Lord Mayor's permission. I should like to discuss at length the economic life of cities in the Middle Ages; but I am obliged to pass it over in silence. It wa,-. so varied that it would need long development. Suffice it to remark that internal commerce was always carried on by the guilds-not by isolated artisans-prices being fixed by mutual agreement; that at the beginning of that period, external commerce was carried on exclusivelyby the city; that it only became the monopoly of the merchants' guild later on, and still later of.isolated individuals; that no work was done on Sunday or on Saturday afternoon (bathing day); lastly that the city purchased the chief necessities (corn, coal, etc.) and delivered them. to the inhabitants at cost price. The custom of the city making the purchases of grain was retained irt Switzerland until the middle of our century. In fact, it is proved by a mass of documents of all kinds, that humanity has never known, either before or after, a period of relative well-being as perfectly assured to all as existed in the cities· of the Middle A,ges. The present poverty, insecurity and over-work. were then absolutely unknown. V. With these elements-liberty, organisation from simple to -complex, production and exchange by trade-unions (guilds), commercewith foreign parts and the buying of main provisions carried on by the city itself, the towns of the Middl~ Ages, during the first two centuries, of their free life, became centres of well-being for all the inhabitants,- centres of opulence and civilization such as we have not seen since then. If we consult documents that allow of establishing the rates of wages for work, compared with the price of provisions (Rogers has· done it for England and a great number of writers have done it for Germany) we see that the work of the artisan, and even of a simple day-labourer, was remunerated at the time by a wage not reached even by skilled workmen nowadays. The account-books of the University of Oxford and certain English estates and those of a great number of German and Swiss towns are there to testify to it. On the other hand, consider the artistic ·finish and the quantity . 22 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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