The Crown was the less willing to give up its ideas of realizing unity in the industrial domain in that it mistrusted the small crafts; it bore in mind the fact that, formerly, when the Holy League tried to create a sort of intermunicipal federal Republic, the masters' and journeymen's confraternities eagerly joined in the attempt. It did not forget that, in the time of the Fronde, the guilds were credited with having had the repeal of the privileges granted to the great merchants and the prohibition to import silks into the kingdom inserted in the peace treaty forced on the Regent by his rebel subjects. Little by little it reduced the authority remaining to them. It was tenacious in carrying into every sphere the form of organization at which it aimed. It made further attempts in 1673 and 1691; between the first date and the second the guilds officially constituted and classified rose from 60 to 127, and what clearly shows the meaning of this administrative classification is the fact that it nominated, or threatened the nomination of, the headmen by officers of the Crown. A very inadequate idea, however, of the encroachments of royal authority will be gained if the solemn publication of edicts alone is remembered, and the daily, incessant attempt of its agents to restrict the jurisdiction both of local and of guild authorities is ignored. No doubt a good deal of the economic jurisdiction formerly exercised by the town magistrates still existed. Contraventions of regulations, and struggles between producers and consumers, between employers and employees, and between allied and rival crafts, were under municipal jurisdiction.[122] The right of pronouncing judgment on such points as falsifications, the observance of religious festivals, the price of merchandise and the rate of wages, was still left to the municipality by Colbert. Naturally its powers were greater or less according as the town was royal, seigneurial, or communal. But it was not unusual for it to retain the right of collecting taxes, and of nominating supervisors who controlled crafts; for it to create masterships and organize charity workshops which changed into regular factories; or to withhold the monopoly granted to the guilds. It is none the less true that communal jurisdiction grew less year by year. Attention must be drawn to the fact that the craft guilds sometimes passed it by and of their own accord applied to the central authority for intervention. Thus, questions of provisions, public health, monopoly, speculation, regulations for the prevention of fraud, and the protection of apprentices, one by one came under the jurisdiction of _parlements_, ministers, governors, and of their delegates. Colbert, in his general rules for manufacture which date from 1666 to 1669, codifies, in the name of the State, the minute directions contained in the guild statutes on questions of apportionment, bad work, etc.