Note 80 — Chapter I · ToC

History of the English Constitution. Of course the Guild was indigenous to almost every age and land, from China to ancient Rome (The Guilds of China, by H.B. Morse), and they survive in the trade and labor unions of our day. The story of English Guilds has been told by Toulmin Smith, and in the histories of particular companies by Herbert and Hazlitt, leaving little for any one to add. No doubt the Guilds were influenced by the Free-masons in respect of officers and emblems, and we know that some of them, like the German Steinmetzen, attached moral meanings to their working tools, and that others, like the French Companionage, even held the legend of Hiram; but these did not make them Free-masons. English writers like Speth go too far when they deny to the Steinmetzen any esoteric lore, and German scholars like Krause and Findel are equally at fault in insisting that they were Free-masons. (See essay by Speth, A. Q. C., i, 17, and History of Masonry, by Steinbrenner, chap. iv.)