After the conclusion of the fair a busy time of fifteen days was set apart for those who had not yet settled their accounts, and to rectify disputes; which time was extended in favour of the representatives of more distant people who wished to go home and return before finally completing their books. The Genoese bursar at these fairs had always a month allowed him before settling his accounts. Bent (in his “Genoa: how the Republic Rose and Fell,” 1881) from whom we have drawn some of the preceding details says (p. 106) these fairs in southern France were not without their political significance. Besides bringing hither their merchandise, the Italian traders imported into these towns their spirit of independence and their love of republicanism. It was from the south of France that the seeds of liberty, equality, and fraternity spread northwards. No greater stronghold of the rights of the third estate existed than at Marseilles. To this day the influence of this fact is strong on the politics of France. And the principles inculcated by the independent traders of Italy took deep root here under the eyes of despotism, and found a truly favourable soil in which to develop. The French revolution, and the state of France as it is to-day, may owe their first source to these very times when a Genoese merchant would repair to these fairs, proud and boastful of his own freedom, of his vote in the General Council, and of a government which owned no royal master; and all this could be said with a sneer at the people over whom the banner of the lilies held despotic sway. _North of Europe._—Towards the close of the tenth century periodical public markets or fairs were established in the northern portions of Europe, and were used for a purpose altogether new in these higher latitudes, but arising out of the rapine and hostilities peculiar to the period. In several of the North German towns the merchandise brought to them consisted of slaves taken in the wars—many of which were believed to have been fermented for the simple purpose of carrying off captives. Helmold relates that he saw 7,000 Danish slaves at one time exposed for sale in the market at Mecklenberg. The common price of ordinary slaves of either sex was about a mark (or 8 oz.) of silver; but some female slaves for their beauty or qualifications were rated as high as three marks. (_Vide_ Thorkelin’s “Essay on the Slave Trade,” pp. 4-9.) We arrive at the close of the sixteenth century. The city of _Antwerp_ had at this period arrived very nearly at the summit of its wealth and glory, which Anderson (“Hist. of Commerce,” ii., p. 25) considers it had acquired by two principal means:—