German commerce and trade steadily declined; and as the guilds saw their
importance and profits lessen, they made fresh and more stringent
regulations against all new-comers. Competitors of every order were
refused admission. Heavy taxes on settlement, costly master-examinations,
limitations of every trade to a certain number of masters and journeymen,
forced thousands into dependence from which there was no escape.
Looking at the time as a whole, one sees clearly how old distinctions
had become obliterated. Wealth found new definitions. The Church had
made poverty the highest state, and insisted, as she does in part
to-day, that the suffering and deprivation of one class were ordained of
God to draw out the sympathies of the other. The rich must save their
souls by alms and endowments, and contentment and acquiescence were to
be the virtues of the poor.
Insensibly this view was modified. Charlemagne, whose extraordinary
personal power and common-sense moulded men at will, set an example no
monarch had ever set before. He ordered the sale of eggs from his hens
and the vegetables from his gardens; and, scorn it as they might, his
sneering nobles insensibly modified their own thought and action.
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