the extension of commerce. As early as the reign of Louis IX. many laws
and regulations prove that the kings were alive to the importance of
trade. Among the chief enactments was one which led to the formation of
the harbour of Aigues-Mortes on the Mediterranean; another to the
publication of the book of "Weights and Measures," by Etienne Boileau, a
work in which the ancient statutes of the various trades were arranged and
codified; and a third to the enactment made in the very year of this
king's death, to guarantee the security of vendors, and, at the same time,
to ensure purchasers against fraud. All these bear undoubted witness that
an enlightened policy in favour of commerce had already sprung up.

Philippe le Bel issued several prohibitory enactments also in the interest
of home commerce and local industry, which Louis X. confirmed. Philippe le
Long attempted even to outdo the judicious efforts of Louis XI., and
tried, though unsuccessfully, to establish a uniformity in the weights and
measures throughout the kingdom; a reform, however, which was never
accomplished until the revolution of 1789. It is difficult to credit how
many different weights and measures were in use at that time, each one
varying according to local custom or the choice of the lord of the soil,
who probably in some way profited by the confusion which this uncertain
state of things must have produced. The fraud and errors to which this led
may easily be imagined, particularly in the intercourse between one part
of the country and another. The feudal stamp is here thoroughly exhibited;
as M. Charles de Grandmaison remarks, "Nothing is fixed, nothing is
uniform, everything is special and arbitrary, settled by the lord of the
soil by virtue of his right of _justesse_, by which he undertook the
regulation and superintendence of the weights and measures in use in his
lordship."

Measures of length and contents often differed much from one another,
although they might be similarly named, and it would require very
complicated comparative tables approximately to fix their value. The _pied
de roi_ was from ten to twelve inches, and was the least varying measure.
The fathom differed much in different parts, and in the attempt to
determine the relations between the innumerable measures of contents which
we find recorded--a knowledge of which must have been necessary for the
commerce of the period--we are stopped by a labyrinth of incomprehensible
calcula