Although it may now be a matter of surprise that such laws remained so long in force, we find even in our own time considerable sections of the community who would if they could[110] have all legislation adapted to suit their own wants, like the ropemakers of Bridport, or the weavers of the whole realm, who in the reign of Philip and Mary,[111] induced the Legislature to pass an Act containing the following extraordinary provisions: “Foreasmuch as the weavers of this realm, have, as well at this present parliament as at divers other times, complained that the rich and wealthy clothiers do in many ways oppress them, some by setting up and keeping in their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining them by journeymen and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which were brought up in the said science of weaving with their families and their households; some by engrossing of looms into their hands and possession and letting them out at such unreasonable rents as the poor artificers are not able to maintain themselves, much less to maintain their wives, families, and children; some also by giving much less wages and hire for weaving and workmanship than in times past they did, whereby they are enforced utterly to forsake their art and occupation wherein they have been brought up. It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it be not foreseen, ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making and dwelling out of a city, borough, market town or corporate town, shall keep or retain or have in his or their houses or possession, any more than one woolen loom at a time, nor shall by any means, directly or indirectly, receive or take any manner of profit, gain or commodity, by letting or selling any loom or any house wherein any loom is or shall be used or occupied, which shall be together by him set or let, upon pain of forfeiture for every week that any person shall do the contrary to the tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings.”[112] In this unwise Act, the spirit of which still prevails among many of the working classes of England, and still forms in many other countries the basis of commercial legislation, another clause provided that weavers who lived in towns might have two looms but no more, so that as many persons as possible might be employed in their own houses, and, without the aid of capitalists, earn and obtain their own independent living—thus treating capital and labour as not merely distinct interests, but as opposed to each other. [Sidenote: State of the currency, A.D. 1549.] [Sidenote: Its depreciation.]