The Livery Company punished the fraudulent workman, corrected the idle apprentice, and also prosecuted the would-be interloper who attempted to infringe upon its rights and privileges. We are indebted to these trade-guilds for introducing to our shores in the first instance, many mechanical arts which, greatly to our advantage, subsequently became naturalized, and afterwards for keeping them alive through times of difficulty and danger, when the central government was not strong enough to afford much protection; the high character that English goods have earned throughout the world's markets is, to a great extent, owing to this system of commercial police, which compelled every workman to serve a long apprenticeship in a technical school, and which punished the producer of fraudulent and worthless articles. On the other hand whole fields of industry were arbitrarily closed to honest and capable folk by the absurd restrictions imposed for the sole benefit of corporations, which, when full allowance has been made for the good they did, and when full credit has been given for the service they rendered by standing in the breach at the critical moment, were, after all, thoroughly reactionary in their tendency, bent, as they were, upon stifling healthy competition whenever possible, and inclined to look upon any new invention as a crime against their craft mysteries. A serious defect in the constitution of our mediæval police consisted in the numerous privileges enjoyed by favoured communities. No police regulation was of universal application; we have seen how in Anglo-Saxon times the king's peace afforded especial protection to certain classes, and how various limitations were imposed according to locality and according to season; subsequently charters were freely given to monasteries, guilds, boroughs and cities, carrying rights and conferring favours that were not shared by the nation at large. The consequence was that every rule bristled with exceptions, and legislation grew proportionally more complicated and difficult of application than would have been the case had all men been equal in the eye of the law. Many a useful measure was rendered largely inoperative by reason of the numbers of persons who could plead privilege against its enforcement in their particular case. Hue and Cry could avail nothing against the baron who had bought a charter of pardon for felonies committed in the past or contemplated in the future, and the pursuit of the sheriff was stayed when the fugitive took refuge in sanctuary. First the clergy, and afterwards persons not in orders who could prove their ability to read a word or two in the Gothic character,[84] were entitled to plead "benefit of clergy," and thereby escape perhaps well-merited punishment. In the reign of Henry VII. this privilege was wisely restricted, by ordaining that those who had pleaded "clergy" once, should be branded on the brawn of the thumb with