No goods were allowed to be carried away from
the city if the townsmen wished to buy; and a tax, called in France the
_octroi_, was levied on goods brought into the town. [Footnote:
The _octroi_ is still collected in Paris.] Moreover, a conviction
prevailed that the gild was morally bound to enforce honest
straightforward methods of business; and the "wardens" appointed by the
gild to supervise the market endeavored to prevent, as dishonest
practices, "forestalling" (buying outside of the regular market),
"engrossing" (cornering the market), [Footnote: The idea that
"combinations in restraint of trade" are wrong quite possibly goes back
to this abhorrence of engrossing.] and "regrating" (retailing at higher
than market price). The dishonest green grocer was not allowed to use a
peck-measure with false bottom, for weighing and measuring were done by
officials. Cheats were fined heavily and, if they persisted in their
evil ways, they might be expelled from the gild.
These merchant gilds, with their social, protective, and regulative
functions, had first begun to be important in the eleventh century.
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