3. _Vexatious regulations._--The guilds were not only jealous of each other but also devoid of economic initiative. This was on account of the privileges they held. As each one possessed a monopoly, they were inclined to go to sleep in the little closed domain which belonged to them. How could they be expected to go in search of improvements, when they were so slow in adopting them? St. Routine was their common patron. The application of a new method might promise larger profits or lessen the cost of production; but it was certain to entail expense, risk, and effort. It seemed to them easier to shut themselves behind a wall like the Great Wall of China. Every innovation encountered their determined opposition. A few instances chosen from among a thousand will suffice to prove their obstinate conservatism. I will take one from Great Britain.[134] "In 1765, on the eve of those great inventions which were entirely to transform working appliances, it was forbidden, under penalty of a fine, to substitute metal carders for the teazles still in use in the greater number of the branches of the textile industry." I will take two other instances from France; at Poitiers[135] the cap-makers greeted the advent of loom-made stockings with marked disfavour, and at Paris the disputes between Erard, the maker of clavecins, and the musical-instrument makers are well known. This exaggerated respect for tradition was also the result of the change which had taken place in the internal government of the guilds. Their direction had passed into the hands of the old members, who, no doubt, possessed the experience of age, but had also that fear of everything new so common to those of advanced years. Like so many other closed and static bodies, the guilds were faithful to the past, hostile to the future, and were to find themselves without resources and defenceless when they had to meet the cold but tonic breath of that competition, which is no doubt cruel for the weak and death to ill-timed enterprise, but which is also stimulating to human activity and an encouragement to the progress of industrial and commercial technique. Would that their tyrannical regulations had succeeded in guaranteeing honest exchange and good quality of production! In this respect, however, they no longer exercised the least control. Antoine de Montchrestien in the time of Henry IV. denounced the deceptions of commerce and industry.[136] In England from the fourteenth century damp spices, second-hand furs, and sheep-skins passing as buck-skin were on the market, and in the woollen trade the principle arose that it is for the buyer to take his own precautions.[137]