Indeed it is not easy to distinguish the earliest traders from corsairs. It would seem that as occasion served they employed their long narrow rowing ships to scour the ocean or to carry the produce of the north, above all the much prized amber. It is thought that they bore it down even to the Bay of Biscay, nay, perhaps yet further within the Roman Empire. Under the intelligent rule of Charles the Great the activity of the Northman assumed a more pacific character, and we meet with the idea of merchant and trade guilds, though the latter were not much encouraged by the emperor, who feared lest they should contain in themselves elements of corporate union and political revolt. But he fostered the growth of cities; and in those days trade and commerce filled up even more than at the present day the daily life of a citizen. In the Middle Ages the expression "merchant" (_mercator_, negotiator) was on the Continent actually held as identical with townsman. It is curious that the early Teuton regarded manual labour as unworthy a free man, but did not extend this feeling to commerce, and trading became more and more the occupation of the third estate. We find them on horseback or in ships traversing many regions to bring their wares to market and to enlarge their sphere of action, and gradually as their numbers increased they would meet each other at the various foreign ports, exchange news, perhaps even wares, and hold together in that brotherly spirit that men of one nation and one tongue are wont to feel towards each other on foreign soil. Disputes and difficulties with the natives must also have been of frequent occurrence, for though the merchant, as bringer of news and novelties, was usually a welcome visitor at a time when intercourse between nations can hardly be said to have existed, yet, on the other hand, he had to reckon with the prejudice that regards what is strange as equivalent to what is hostile. Hence the merchants very naturally combined among themselves at the different ports to protect their common interests, and endeavoured by all means in their power to enlist in their favour their own sovereigns and those of the lands they visited. Thus in the lawbook of London, under the reign of Ethelred II. the Unready (978), we come across the phrase, "the people of the Emperor have been judged worthy of the good laws, like to ourselves." This phrase meant that, in cases of wrong done to the foreigner by the native, the foreigner should enjoy the protection of the native laws as though he were a citizen, instead of being treated as heretofore like an alien. "The people of the Emperor" meant in this case the Teutonic merchants who traded on the banks of the Thames long before the German cities had combined to form their famous league, long before they had founded their factories in Russia, Scandinavia, and Flanders.