When the Reform agitation threatened to deprive the companies of their trading privileges at no distant period, and later, when it had succeeded in doing so, attempts seem to have been made to bring into prominence their social aspect[207], and the procession was again reinvigorated. The pomp which signalised George the Fourth's coronation may also have given a stimulus to pageantry. The arbours were repaired and rebuilt, and the year 1849 witnessed a grand revival of the procession. Attempts in this direction were now not infrequent, but were necessarily spasmodic. Yet the time-honoured Show was found to be possessed of wonderful vitality. When the Municipal Corporations Act destroyed the exclusive privileges of trading which the companies possessed they clung to their annual feast and to the yearly procession, for which they retained the arbours at some expense and self-denial. Gradually however as the successive freemen died the arbours reverted one by one to the corporation of the town; the other Gild property, which was not already divided, was shared among surviving members, or fell through debt or similar causes into other hands. Kingsland itself was to revert to the town at the decease of the last of the members of the companies, according to an arrangement concluded in 1862. Even still the old Show was hard to kill. In spite of much that was saddening, and much degradation, the procession lingered on till some twelve or fourteen years ago, when it died a natural death. So another link with the past was broken, and another spot of colour wiped away from these duller days of uniformity and routine. CHAPTER VIII. THE END OF THE COMPANIES. [Sidenote: _Failure of efforts to restrict trade._] The system of elaborate organisation by which men had regulated trade in the past had given way to an equally complete system of individualism. Confused philosophical reasoning, combined with the decay of old means of regulation, had produced this anti-social state of things. Individual competition, in uncontrolled energy, reigned supreme amid almost incredible suffering and squalor. Everything which might tend to check the progress of the devastation was looked upon with suspicion and swept swiftly out of the way. All the old restraints were wanting, and self-interest alone formed the mainspring of action. To this fetish everything was sacrificed--men's bodies and men's principles. Commercial dealings took the most questionable forms: adulteration of products went on unchecked by any qualms of honesty. The companies had long ago ceased to make any attempts in the direction of industrial regulation. The whole efforts of their members were concentrated on the vain endeavour to restrict trade to the chartered towns.