bishops and laymen. In the 14th century the papacy ventured to extend its provisions to the filling up of bishoprics as well as benefices. The anger roused by this foreign intervention was increased by the fact that at this time the popes were resident at Avignon and were thus under the influence of France, while England was at war with that country. For some time the English kings connived at the exercise of papal patronage, because it enabled them to defeat the chapter's right of election. But at last public opinion found expression in the Statute of Provisors, which was passed in 1351 and renewed in 1390. By this statute papai provisions were forbidden, and persons receiving them were liable to imprisonment. If the pope infringes on the rights of clerical patrons, the latter are to insist on exercising their power of appointment, and if they fail to do so, the presentation lapses to the king. In the case of a lay patron, if he fails to present within six months, his right lapses to the bishop, and if the bishop fails to appoint within a further month, the king is to make the presentation. [Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. iii. pp. 310-36.-Makower, Constitutional History of the English Church; the statute is printed in full in app. viii.]

R. L.

PROXY. The term proxy is used in two senses. First it denotes a person who represents another for voting purposes, and secondly, it denotes the instrument by which the authority to represent is conferred. An instrument of proxy may be either general or special. A general proxy authorises the person who holds it to exercise his discretion throughout in the matter to which it relates, whereas a special proxy only authorises him to vote for or against some specific resolution or proposal. Under the Bankruptcy Act of 1869 the system of general proxies gave rise to gross abuses, which were investigated by a select committee of the House of Commons in 1880.

The committee recommended that no proxy should be used unless it expressed in writing the particular purpose for which it was given. The Bankruptcy Acts of 1883 and 1890 do not go so far as this, but they put considerable restrictions on the use of general proxies in bankruptcy matters.

[See Bankruptcy Act 1883, sched. i., and Fankruptcy Act 1890, § 22.]

M. D. C.

PRUD' HOMMES (FR.). Councils for conciliation and arbitration in disputes between masters and workmen, instituted by a law of 1806. These bodies are authorised by a decree of the ministers of commerce and justices in industrial centres, on a demand by the municipal council approved by the chamber of commerce. They are permanent and elective, and must consist of at least six members. When the local industry comprises only a small number of trades, each branch elects two members, one a master the other a workman.

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When the number of branches of industry is large, they are grouped into classes for the election of members. The members serve for six years; one half retiring every three years, but they are re-eligible. The president and vice president are elected annually. If the president is a master, the vice-president must be a workman, and vice versa. The masters act gratuitously. The workmen may receive attendance fees, paid from the municipal funds, as are also all the expenses of the councils. Each council has a special bureau of two members, and a general bureau of all the members. The special bureau is charged to endeavour to conciliate the parties; if not successful they are sent before the general bureau. The judgment given is final for all disputes in which the question at issue does not exceed a sum of 200 f. (say £8). Above that sum there is a right of appeal to the tribunal of commerce. The qualification of prud' hommes is the age of twenty-five and five years' exercise of the trade. Jurisdiction only extends to trades which elect members, and which are named in the decree instituting the council. The councils are competent to judge contestations between members of workmen's associations, between masters relative to trade marks, models, and designs, and in matters relating to apprenticeship. Should one of the parties not appear, judgment is given by default, and can only be set aside by appeal to the tribunal of commerce. The councils have power to condemn disorderly workmen and insubordinate apprentices to imprisonment not exceeding three days. A law of a more general character was passed in December 1892 to meet the case of disputes between masters and collective bodies of workmen, and strikes, which were not provided for by the law on Prud' hommes (see CONCILIATION, BOARDS OF; CONSEILS DE PRUD'HOMMES).

T. L.

PTOLEMY OF LUCCA (1236-1327), a Dominican scholar, in later life bishop of Torcelli, was very possibly the real author of the greater part of the treatise De Regimine Principum, commonly attributed to St. Thomas AQUINAS.

The portions of the work especially interesting to the economist are 1. ii. c. 3, on the state's food supply; cc. 5-7, on natural and artificial riches; c. 13, on the currency; c. 14, on weights and measures; c. 15, on the relief of the poor from the public treasury; and 1. iv. cc. 4-6, on the Platonic communism. Concerning the currency, it is remarked that "the prince or king ought to be moderate in changing or diminishing the weight or the metal, since this turns to the detriment of the people, inasmuch as money is a measure of things; so that to change the coinage is just the same as to change a weight." [As to the place of this teaching in the history of the doctrine of currency, see W. Endemann, Studien in der romanisch kanonistischen Wirthschafts- und Rechtslehre, ii. (1883) 163, 187. Bibliographical

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PUBLIC ASSISTANCE. The phrase "public assistance," is a literal translation of the French Assistance Publique, which roughly corresponds to our POOR LAW (q.v.) But certain differences both of principle and detail may be noticed in the relief of the poor in the two countries. In France the right to relief is not recognised, nor is the distinction between POVERTY (q.v.) and destitution. As a logical consequence there is no poor-rate, in the sense in which in this country the overseers of the poor are compelled by law to raise as much for the relief of the poor as that relief demands. The relief given in France is therefore limited to the sums available for the purpose, which are raised in several ways, by private subscriptions, by bequest, by a tax on amusements, viz. the tickets of places of public entertainment, and endowments. Thus in France the organ of poor relief corresponds more to a charity organisation society administered by a local authority than to our poor-law system. In each commune theoretically, and practically in the great majority of communes, a Bureau de Bienfaisance is established, presided over by the mayor and a council elected locally. This body distributes the funds at its disposal, but is limited to those funds. Hence we find great inequalities between communes as to the sum available annually for the relief of the poor, and a tendency to spread the funds over as wide an area as possible, with the result that the relief given is often to our minds wholly inadequate. The relief of foundlings (Enfants Trouvés), deserted children, vagrants, and the sick, is organised in great detail, but a specific or historical treatment of the subject would take us too far.

L. R. P.

PUBLIC LOANS. See DEBTS, PUBLIC. PUBLIC POLICY. English courts have always refused to enforce contracts which they regard as contrary to public policy; but the test of what is or is not opposed to public policy has naturally varied as the conditions of society have changed. As our law is uncodified, and as the judges are technically bound by the decisions of their predecessors, we find them continually engaged in the task of putting new wine into old bottles. The modern tendency is to restrict the doctrine of public policy within narrow limits, and to confine its operation to agreements which are tainted with criminality or are contra bonos

mores.

As Justice Cave said in a recent case,

this is " a branch of the law which certainly should not be extended, as judges are more to be trusted as interpreters of the law than as expounders of what is called public policy." Commerce is left to take care of itself, and contracts are enforced without regard to the opinion of lawyers as to what may be for the advantage of trade in general. The old rules as to contracts in restraint of trade have been watered down. Trade unions, which were regarded as illegal combinations in restraint of trade, have received legislative recognition, and apart from fraud full play is allowed to the competition either of individuals or of combinations to keep up prices.

[See the whole question discussed in a recent House of Lords case, Mogul Steamship Co. v. M'Gregor (1892) A. C. 25].

See PERPETUITIES; RESTRAINT OF TRADE; THELLUSSON, P.; TRADE UNIONS.

M. D. C.

PUBLICANI. The name given to the capitalists who farmed the revenues of the Roman state. Down to the fall of the republic Rome hardly possessed the rudiments of a permanent civil service, and was therefore without proper machinery for collecting the varied revenues of her extensive possessions. This work was done by wealthy individuals who combined in companies or syndicates, and farmed mines, salt-works, fisheries, etc., belonging to the state, as well as certain indirect revenues such as the portoria or harbour dues. When transmarine provinces were acquired, the same method was employed to collect the landtax imposed upon them. The system reached its greatest and most pernicious extension when C. Gracchus (B.C. 121), applied it to the revenues of "Asia," by far the richest of the Roman provinces. From that time till the establishment of the empire the Publicani filled a great space in the history of Rome, partly as the means whereby the provinces were impoverished and the capital flooded with ill-gotten wealth, and partly as a force in the internal politics of the ruling community, generally hostile to the senate, which made feeble attempts to check their oppression, and therefore inclining to an alliance with the popular party, but never really attached to any principle, and aiming solely at the accumulation of money.

With the establishment of the empire and the reform of the administration, the scope for the activity of the Publicani was reduced. The provincial land-tax was collected by public officials, and, with regard to those branches of the revenue which continued to be farmed, a closer and more severe supervision was exercised by the government. publicans so often referred to in the New Testament were not the Roman capitalists but their underlings, usually natives of the subject provinces, and therefore even more hateful to

The

PUFENDORF, SAMUEL (1632-1694), studied law in Leipzig and Jena, and lectured at Heidelberg from 1661 to 1670, when he left Germany for a professorship at the Swedish university of Lund. In 1686 he was appointed privy councillor and royal historiographer of Sweden; two years later he was called to Berlin by the Great Elector (Frederick William, 1620-1688), who bestowed on him similar titles and dignities.

His De Statu imperii germanici liber unus, Geneva (real imprint the Hague), 1667, republished in German in 1870 (in the Historisch-Politische Bibliothek), may have led to his leaving Germany, for, though issued under the fictitious name of Severinus de Mozambano, it was known that Pufendorf was the author of this critical but faithful picture of the state of helplessness of the German empire, and of the misgovernment prevalent in most German states since the Thirty Years' War.

The publication of his former work, the Elementa jurisprudentiæ universalis (1660), had already attracted public attention and led to his ppointment at the university of Heidelberg; it is the first attempt to found the philosophy of aw on a purely rational basis, and may be considered as the origin of his celebrated treatise De Jure naturæ et gentium libri VIII., published at Lund, 1672 (another edition at Amsterdam, 1704, with the author's emendations, since often republished, and translated into most European languages).

In state questions, Pufendorf upholds the principles maintained by the founders of the Prussian monarchy, commencing with his protector Frederick William, the Great Elector. The individual will must be subject to the will of the collective or individual possessor of supreme power (summum imperium), who is the interpreter of the nation considered as a moral body, and is to decide what is lawful and what is not; in this respect, Pufendorf follows the teaching of HOBBES, limiting, however, the authority of the supreme power to what the citizens have acquired under its protection. Practically the state, thus possessed of the dominium eminens (see EMINENT DOMAIN), regulates the disposal of private fortunes, -SUMPTUARY LAWS, successoral laws, etc.-and the levying of taxation; its duty is to foster the economic development of its subjects, especially in agriculture, manufactures, trade, and navigation. Pufendorf is not a thorough-going opponent of MONOPOLIES (q.v.), and would allow the privileges of corporations and crafts to continue. The only limitations to the fiscal prerogative of government are that it must never act as a dissolute or weak head of the family; first of all, export duties must never impede the prosperity of trade, for "a port which traders desert is a sterile port."

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Taxation should always be proportioned to the means of the taxpayer.

On the purely economic domain, Pufendorf is not carried away by the passion for the indefinite expansion of population, so general among German cameralists (see CAMERALISTIC SCIENCE) of the last two centuries. He considers that the question whether property should be individual or collective depends on the stage of progress reached by the nation, for history shows that collective property is the most natural and advantageous system for barbarians. Equal division among the children of the same father is not naturally necessary; account ought to be taken of the existence of the family taken as a whole; according to each case, the practice of MAJORAT or MINORAT (q.v.) may be recommended.

Pufendorf's theory of prices has been highly praised. It comprises the vulgar price, pretium vulgare, founded on the fitness of things to satisfy human wants, and the pretium eminens or price expressed in terms of money; Pufendorf thus announces the distinction between VALUE IN USE (7.v.) and value in exchange (see EXCHANGE, VALUE IN), and classifies economic goods asthings, res, services, opera, and obligations, actiones. Scarcity is the most important factor of high prices, but value in exchange is often unconnected with value in use. As to expenses of production, those only which are usual, influence prices, which also experience the influence of a scarcity or abundance of the currency. He, however, rather exaggerates the action of law when he states that the use of precious metals as money, is not so much derived from their natural adequacy, as from a convention among men. value of land, considered as naturally stable, shows if a general rise of prices is to be ascribed to a scarcity of money or to a scarcity of goods. His theory of usury follows a via media between the absolute rejection and the absolute liberty of interest; according to Pufendorf, it is a mistake to believe that the taking of interest is forbidden by the Bible. Moses actually sanctioned it by allowing Jews to take interest from foreigners.

The

[Roscher, Geschichte der National Oekonomik in Deutschland, pp. 304-319.-Treitschke, "Samuel Pufendorf" in Preussische Jahrbücher, vol. 35 (pp. 614-55), and vol. 36 (pp. 61-109), Berlin, 1875.-P. Meyer, Samuel Pufendorf, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte seines Lebens, Grimma, 1894 (see also INTERNATIONAL LAW).]

PULLUS. See PIPE ROLLS.

E. Ca.

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officers. Payments were not made, as a rule, in money, but in TALLIES (q.v.), which entitled the recipients to deduct the specified sums from their future taxes. Not infrequently payment was evaded altogether. Little is known of the early history of these exactions, but in the 13th and 14th centuries they gave rise to such glaring abuses that the petitions and laws on the subject are extremely numerous. From Magna Carta (arts. 28-31) we learn that royal constables and bailiffs were in the habit of exacting purveyance, and this practice is forbidden. In the Articuli super cartas of 1300 it is provided that goods are only to be taken for the king and his household, and then only at a price agreed with the owner; undue exactions are to be punished with dismissal and imprisonment. But legislation seemed impotent to check the extortions of royal officials; under Edward II. the complaints are as loud as ever, and the ordinances of 1311 went so far as to forbid purveyance altogether. But the ordinances were formally repealed by the parliament of 1322, in which the law of 1300 was reenacted. Still the abuses continue to be the subject of innumerable petitions under Edward III., in whose reign no less than ten statutes were passed on the subject. The most important of these is the statute of 1362, which provided that purveyance is to be limited henceforth to the personal wants of the king and queen, whereas it had frequently been exacted for other members of the royal family and their servants. At the same time the hated name of purveyors is changed for that of buyers. This law seems to have been far more efficacious than any of its predecessors, and the subject retires into the background until the 17th century. Under James I. we have a petition of the Commons in 1604, which shows that many of the old abuses were still rife. It is stated that the royal officials, when 200 carts are required, will order 800 or 900, in order that the owners may bribe them to withdraw the demand. Goods were valued by strangers called in by the purveyors, and owners were often unable to obtain more than a fraction of the value. Suitors who complained of illegal usage found it impossible to obtain justice against the agents of the crown.

The result of

these complaints was a proposal in the Lords that the king should surrender the right of purveyance for an annual grant of £50,000, but nothing came of it. In 1610 Cecil nearly succeeded in carrying through the "Great Contract," by which purveyance and the feudal rights of the crown were to be abolished in return for a fixed revenue, but subsequent disagreement between the crown and the Commons led to the abandonment of the scheme. Thus purveyance lasted till the great rebellion, and perished with the defeat of the king. In 1660 it was formally abolished (see PRISAGE).

[Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. ii. pp. 535. 538. Hallam, Constitutional History.-Gardiner, History of England, vol. i. pp. 170-174.] R. L.

PUT AND CALL. Speculation in stock exchange securities, bullion, and produce, is, t a large extent, carried on by means of OPTIONS (see also CALL). Such options are either single options ("call" or "put") or double options ("put and call"). A speculator is said to "give for the call" if he agrees to pay a specified percentage, and in return obtains the privilege to decide at a specified point of time whether he will purchase a specified amount of stock, bullion, or produce at a specified price; he is said to "give for the put" if in the same manner he secures the option of selling such stock, bullion, or produce. Thus for instance a speculator who gives per cent for the call of £10,000 consols at 112 at the end of December, can at the end of December, at his own choice, either call for £10,000 consols to be delivered to him at 112 or pay £25 without calling for the consols. speculator is, on the other hand, said to give for the "put and call" if, at the specified time, he is to become entitled at his option either to buy or to sell at the specified price.

A

The amount of the percentage payable for the privilege of exercising an option depends on the length of time, the nature of the security or article, and the general situation and prospects. Options in securities or articles, in which there is much speculation, have a regular market value, and-on account of reasons which it would take too long to explain the market value of a double option is always equal to the double amount of the market value of the corresponding single option. Thus in the above-quoted example the 'put and call" of the £10,000 consols at 112 for end of December would cost per cent. The speculator who sells the option, who in stock exchange language is said to "take" for the "call," or the "put," or the "put and call," reckons on the steadiness of prices, whilst the purchaser of the option speculates on fluctuations. If he believes in a change in one direction only, he will give for "a single option," but if he anticipates fluctuations without being able to form an opinion as to their direction, he will "give for" a "put and call." There are many circumstances, imaginable, under which a change in the range of prices may be expected within a given time, but subject to great uncertainty as to the direction of the change. Thus, for instance, a political decision of great importance may be expected by a certain date, and it may be thought that if the decision is taken one way it will lead to a heavy fall of prices, whilst an important rise would ensue if it were taken the other way. Under such circumstances the possibility of being able at one's option either to call or put at the present price, at the time when it is anticipated that

the uncertainty will be over, may of course be worth a great deal more than the amount of the option money. Thus in the example given above, a speculator who is able at the time of the option, becoming exerciseable as before, to sell the consols at 114, will call them at 112, and, after paying per cent option money, and per cent brokerage, realise a net profit of 13 per cent, and he will obtain the same profit, if

consols, instead of rising to 114, recede to 110.

In actual practice option transactions are generally more complex, being used to assist or serve as insurances for other operations, or being made the basis of a series of successive specula

tions; but this fact in no way affects the general principles of options, which may be stated as follows: the speculator who sells the option has an unlimited risk of loss, and cannot gain more than the option money, whilst the purchaser of the option cannot lose more than the option money and the brokerage, and has an unlimited chance of profit. This limitation of risk on one side creates the impression that option business is a safer and therefore sounder mode of speculation than other speculative business, but this view is based on an obvious fallacy. As already men. tioned, the purchaser's comparative safety is counterbalanced by the seller's corresponding danger, but even from the purchaser's point of view the dealings in options are more in the nature of gambling transactions than ordinary speculative purchases or sales. Whilst in the case of an ordinary speculation the result may be favourable in the end, although at first there is an apparent loss; the result of the option is final at the same date as the time for declaring the purchaser's choice has come. If the option cannot be exercised the amount at stake is irretrievably lost. The fact that the loss is limited induces the purchaser to speculate in a much larger amount than he could afford to do if there was an unlimited risk, and therefore materially increases the total amount of speculative purchases and sales. Moreover, imprudence in option dealings is increased by the circumstance that, whilst speculators generally are compelled to pay the difference between the original price and the market price, or between the last market price and the present market price, as the case may be, at each successive account day, if such difference is against them, and must therefore have liquid means at their

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[For an interesting description of the stock exchange operations known as option dealing, see L. R. Higgins, Put and Call, Effingham Wilson, 1896.]

PYX, from Tugis, a box, is properly the pyx-chest at the mint into which one coin from every 15 lbs. of newly coined gold, or 60 lbs. (see PYX, TRIAL OF). of silver, is put to await the Trial of the Pyx In addition to its

ecclesiastical use, the word is also applied to the box in the chapel of the pyx, Westminster Abbey, in which the standard plates of gold and silver used at the trial are kept by the warden of the standards (see STANDARDS, WARDEN OF).

R. H.

PYX, TRIAL OF, the now annual testing of coins from the pyx-chest at the mint. Theso and pieces from the trial plates (see Pxx) are assayed by cupellation by a jury of the Goldsmiths' Company. The permissible variation or "remedy" is now 2 parts in 1000 of gold, of silver 4; but the difference is usually much less. By weight the "remedies' are respectively 1.6 and 4.17 in 1000. The 27 combustiones in the PIPE ROLL of 11 Hen. II. show a rough mode of trial adapted to an age in which mints were numerous, but the blancum [argentum] of Domesday denotes its equivalent much earlier. Both tested coin which had been in circulation. The pixides appear in 1281; and in a British Museum MS. (Cott. Cleop. A. xvi., f. 50) is a detailed account of a trial in 1349, when gold nobles were tested by a jury against Florentine florins and found deficient ultra debitum remedium. Trial plates date from 1477.

assaii

[Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. 698.-Madox, Hist. of Excheq. i. 291.-Report to Compt. Gen. of Exchequer on Trial of the Pyx, 1866.-Reports of Dep. Master of Mint.-Standards Act, 1866.Scargill-Bird, Guide to Public Records, p. 217.]

R. H.

QUADRUPLE. An abbreviated expression for "quadruple pistole" was not uncommonly used, up to the earlier years of the last century, to denote the Spanish gold coin of 4 pistoles or 8 escudos, commonly, but less correctly, known as the DOUBLOON (q.v.).

C. A. H.

QUALIFICATION. The amount of stock or shares required to be held by the directors of a JOINT-STOCK COMPANY. In some companies no such qualification is required, but in respect of most companies it is usual to fix by the

| articles of association the amount of stock or shares necessary to be held by each director, and also to lay down certain conditions, the occurrence of which will cause a director's office to be vacated generally these are bankruptcy or insolvency, or the holding of any other office of profit under the company.

In political affairs, qualifications of different kinds or degrees are required both for the holding of various offices and for the exercise of some of the duties of citizenship. These are the qualifications required for acting as