Another great economic advantage which assisted England was the fact that she, more than any other European nation, had broken down the old industrial order, with its guilds, its elaborate restrictions, and conservative methods. Personal freedom, security of property, liberty to work and live where and how one liked, existed in England to an extent unknown on the Continent before the French Revolution. The following account of the condition of the cotton manufacture in Germany in the eighteenth century will serve to indicate the obstacles to the reformed methods of industry:--"Everything was done by rule. Spinning came under public inspection, and the yarn was collected by officials. The privilege of weaving was confined to the confraternity of the guild. Methods of production were strictly prescribed; public inspectors exercised control. Defects in weaving were visited with punishment. Moreover, the right of dealing in cotton goods was confined to the confraternity of the merchant guild: to be a master-weaver had almost the significance of a public office. Besides other qualifications, there was the condition of a formal examination. The sale also was under strict supervision; for a long time a fixed price prevailed, and a maximum sale was officially prescribed for each dealer. The dealer had to dispose of his wares to the weaver, because the latter had guaranteed to him a monopoly of the export trade."[91] Under such conditions the new machine-industry could make little advance. Excepting in the case of the woollen industries, England had for the most part already shaken off the old regulations before 1770. In particular, the cotton trade, which was in the vanguard of the movement, being of recent growth and settling outside the guild towns, had never known such restrictions, and therefore lent itself to the new order with a far greater facility than the older trades. Moreover, England was free from the innumerable and vexatious local taxes and restrictions prevalent in France and in the petty governments of Germany. Although the major part of these foolish and pernicious regulations has been long swept away from Germany and other continental nations, the retarding influence they exercised, in common with the wider national system of protection which still survives, kept back the cotton industry, so that in Germany it still stands half a century behind its place in England.[92] The following figures show how substantial was the lead held by England in the cotton manufacture a little before the middle of the century. NUMBER OF SPINDLES WORKING IN COTTON MILLS IN 1846.[93]