Note 23 — Chapter I · THE MEDIEVAL BACKGROUND

The Grete Sentence of Curs Expouned, chap. xxviii (Select English Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, p. 333). The passage contains comprehensive denunciations of all sorts of combination, in particular, gilds, “men of sutel craft, as fre masons and othere,” and “marchauntis, groceris, and vitileris” who “conspiren wickidly togidre that noon of hem schal bie over a certeyn pris, though the thing that thei bien be moche more worthi” (ibid., pp. 333, 334).

Wyclif’s argument is of great interest and importance. It is (1), that such associations for mutual aid are unnecessary. No special institutions are needed to promote fraternity, since, quite apart from them, all members of the community are bound to help each other: “Alle the goodnes that is in thes gildes eche man owith for to do bi comyn fraternyte of Cristendom, by Goddis comaundement.” (2) That combinations are a conspiracy against the public. Both doctrines were points in the case for the sovereignty of the unitary State, and both were to play a large part in subsequent history. They were used by the absolutist statesmen of the sixteenth century as an argument for State control over industry, in place of the obstructive torpor of gilds and boroughs, and by the individualists of the eighteenth century as an argument for free competition. The line of thought as to the relation of minor associations to the State runs from Wyclif to Turgot, Rousseau, Adam Smith, the Act of the Legislative Assembly in 1792 forbidding trade unions (“Les citoyens de même état ou profession, les ouvriers et compagnons d’un art quelconque ne pourront ... former des règlements sur leurs prétendus intérêts communs”), and the English Combination Acts.