Besides, the benefits which resulted from common trading would be too obvious for any individual who could procure entrance into the Gild to abstain from doing so. It was far more to the common interest that one representative should buy for all and then divide the purchase equitably than that each should compete with each and so minister simply to the profit of the seller. There are several examples of such combined purchasing by a royal or municipal officer in towns where there was no Merchant Gild[33]. It was however generally effected by means of the latter, the granting of which meant the according of permission to the members to settle for themselves their custom in buying and selling. The retail trade within the town was restricted to their own members individually, and the wholesale trade coming _to_ the town was reserved to themselves collectively. Members of the Merchant Gild alone might sell within the walls, and traders coming from without might sell only to the Merchant Gild. There was no danger then as there would be now of such a practice driving all trade away from the town, for the restrictions in force at one place would be paralleled almost exactly in every other. At the periodical fairs alone did free trade prevail. But the exclusive privileges might be exceedingly harmful if the main body of householders were not members of the Merchant Gild. It was then the fact that the restricted trading was not "to the advantage of the community of the borough but only to the advantage of those who are of the said society[34]." When however the great majority of the householders were members of the trading corporation the arrangement would work well and beneficially for the whole town. [Sidenote: _All Burgesses are Gildsmen._] The effect of the granting of royal authorisation was, therefore, to finally draw all burgesses into the Gild, for all townsmen of any importance were traders. The records of the Shrewsbury Merchant Gild, though of the scantiest description, are sufficient to show how comprehensive was its range. All branches of trade were, at least down to the time of Edward I., represented in it[35]; it comprised every rank and degree, proportioning its fines and payments accordingly. The progress of the fusion of races is shown by the lists of names, which are both Saxon and Norman in indiscriminate order. [Sidenote: _Duties of Gildsmen._] [Sidenote: _Tendency to amalgamation of Gild and Communa._]