f the country.

The improving communication of the eighteenth century enabled the
clothiers and other leading manufacturers to distribute more of their
wares even in the remotest parts of the country, but the value paid
for their wares reached the vendors by slow and indirect channels of
trade, passing for the most part through the metropolis.

But while London was the one constant national market-place, national
trade was largely assisted by fairs held for several weeks each year
at Stourbridge, Winchester, and other convenient centres. At the most
important of these the large merchants and manufacturers met their
customers, and business was transacted between distant parts of the
country, including all kinds of wares, English and foreign. Thus we
had one constant and two or three intermittent avenues of free
national trade. The great bulk of markets, however, were confined
within far smaller areas.

In the more highly developed and specialised textile trades certain
regular market-places were established of wide local importance. The
largest of these specialised district markets were at Leeds, Halifax,
Norwich, and Exeter. Here the chief local manufacturers of cloth,
worsted, or crape met the merchants and factors and disposed of their
wares to these distributing middlemen.

It was, however, in the general market-places of the county town or
smaller centres of population that the mass of the business of
exchange was transacted. There the mass of the small workers in
agriculture and manufacture brought the product of their labour and
sold it, buying what they needed for consumption and for the pursuance
of their craft. Only in considerable towns were there to be found in
the earlier eighteenth century any number of permanent shops where all
sorts of wares could be bought at any time. The weekly market in the
market-town was the chief medium of commerce for the great mass of the
population.

Regarding the general structure of Industry we see that not only are
international bonds slight and unessential, but that within the nation
the elements of national cohesion are feeble as compared with those
which subsist now. We have a number of small local communities whose
relations, though tolerably strong with other communities in their
immediate neighbourhood, become greatly weakened by distance. For the
most part these small communities are self-sufficing for work and
life, producing most of their own necessaries, and o