Ancient and modern conditions in England. In the earliest times for which we have abundant material the economic life of England had already reached in certain directions a high degree of complexity. Even in the rural districts, manorial records reveal the existence of a great variety of classes and groups of persons engaged in the performance of economic functions. The lord of the manor with his officials and retainers, the peasantry bound to him by ties of personal dependence and mutual rights and obligations, constituted a little world, in which we can watch the play of motives and passions not so dissimilar as we are sometimes led to believe from those of the great modern world. In many a country district the gradations of social rank were more continuous, the opportunities of intercourse more frequent, and the capacity for organization greater than in modern times. The manorial accounts were kept with precision and detail, and we are told that a skilled official could estimate to the utmost farthing the value of the services due from the villein to his lord. The manor was indeed self-sufficient and independent in the sense that it could furnish everything required by the majority of the inhabitants, and that over the greater part of rural England production was not carried on with a view to a distant market. But in the earliest times the manor was subjected to external influences of great importance. Vast areas of the country were in fact under the single control of a territorial lord or an ecclesiastical foundation. Every manor composing these great fiefs was likely to be affected by the policy or the character of the administration of the feudal lord, and he, again, by the policy or the difficulties, the strength or the weakness, of the central government. Foreign trade and foreign intercourse were undeveloped, but their influence was in historical times never entirely absent, while the influence of Roman law and the Christian Church constantly tended to modify the manorial organization. In the towns the division of labour had proceeded much further than in the rural districts, and there were in existence organized bodies, such as the Gild Merchant and the crafts, whose functions were primarily economic. But one of the most striking characteristics of town life in the middle ages was the manner in which municipal and industrial privileges and responsibilities were interwoven. In modern times the artisan, however well trained, efficient and painstaking he may be, does not, in virtue of these qualities, enjoy any municipal or political privileges. By means of his trade union, co-operative society or club he may gain some experience in the management of men and business, and in so far as the want of a sufficient income does not constitute an insuperable difficulty, he may share in the public life of the country. But in his character as artisan he enjoys no municipal or political privileges. In the middle