During this time, when the people were crying out for more freedom, one very good arrangement was made. Germany, as you know, consisted of a large number of states, some small and some large, but all of them with their own rulers, and armies, and customs officials. It was possible to pass through several of these states in the course of a day's ride. All of them took toll of goods passing through them, and all of them had to have guards at their frontiers, to see that the goods did not pass through without paying toll. You will get some idea of what this meant if you suppose the English counties to be separate states, and that a wagon-load of goods is being sent, say, from Birmingham to Carlisle. Suppose the wagon to reach the border of Staffordshire: it would be stopped there by customs officers, who would estimate the value of the goods in it, and make the owner pay a certain sum before he was allowed to proceed. When the wagon came to the Cheshire border, there would be another search and another payment; and the same business would be repeated on the borders of Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland. I am sure you will say in a moment that this was not only a great nuisance, but it must have interfered with trade a great deal, and made goods very expensive to the purchaser. This is exactly what happened in Germany. Of course, men tried to get out of paying toll whenever they could, and smuggling goods from one state to another became a regular business. If I were to ask you to suggest a way out of the difficulty, you would say: "Let all the states join together into a group, and take toll once and for all when the goods enter the group. The money so received can be divided up amongst the states afterwards." This is just what was done. A Customs Union, or Zollverein, was formed by Prussia and several of the neighbouring states, and each state sent a member to represent it in a sort of Parliament known as the Bund Diet.[66]