ractically impossible that a mere serf could devote his energies to a
craft or trade with any hope of independence for himself or any chance
of contributing to the prosperity of his working and trading neighbors.
The trading, manufacturing, and commercial classes in each locality
began to form themselves into groups, or what might be called guilds,
of their own, with the object of common protection, in order to secure
an opening for their traffic and their industry, and for the
preservation of the earnings and the profits which came of their skill
and energy. These trading groups asserted for themselves their right
to free action in all that regarded the regulation of their work and
the secure disposal of their profits, and thus they became what might
be called governing bodies in each separate locality. One common
principle of these governing bodies was that no one should be allowed
to become a craftsman or trader in any district if he were a serf, and
they claimed, and gradually came to maintain, the right to invest
others with the title and privileges of freemen. This right of
freemanship soon became hereditary, and the male children of a freeman
were to be freemen themselves. In many communities the man who married
a freeman's daughter acquired, if he had not been free before, the
right of freemanship. No qualification of residence was necessary to
{256} enable a man thus to become free. The self-organized community,
whatever it might be, had the right of creating any stranger a freeman
according as it thought fit.

[Sidenote: 1835--Reform of municipal corporations]

We find this ancient system still in harmless and graceful illustration
when a public man who has distinguished himself in the service of the
country is honored by admission to the freedom of some ancient city.
But in the far-off days, when the system was in practical operation,
the unlimited right of creating freemen came to mean that in many
cities, towns, and localities of all descriptions a number of outsiders
who had no connection by residence, property, or local interest of any
kind with the district, and who were wholly irresponsible to the public
opinion of the local community, had the right to interfere in the
management of its affairs and to become members of its municipal body.
For the local traders soon began to form themselves into councils or
committees for the management of the local affairs, and, in fact,
became what might be desc