614

to those who condemned factory labour as making men's work less skilled and their minds less intelligent. "Education," he wrote, "comes not from the structure of a loom but from the texture of society." This thesis is also the hypothesis of moral statisticians, to whom, however, Vaughan

does not refer. The self-educated man reveals himself in his exaggeration of the effects of town life, an exaggeration which sometimes leads to a confusion of commercial, civic, and social influences, sometimes to such an assertion as this, that the eddas and sagas "hardly deserve a place in the history of literature" (p. 137).

[Landor mentions his eloquence-Imag. Conr., ed. Crump, vol. vi. p. 397; Coleridge his Wycliffe — Table Talk, ed. Bohn, p. 223; M'Culloch his Age of Great Cities-Lit. of Pol. Ec., p. 356. In the 18th century R. PRICE had attacked towns as the graves of mankind," and YOUNG defended them "Euthanasia.' Vaughan's book was a coup de grace to these writers.]

as an

J. D. R.

VAUVENARGUES, Luc DE CLAPIERS, Marquis de (1715-1747), was compelled, through bad health, to leave the army in 1744, and lingered on a few years, bearing this trial with equanimity, and finding a solace in the composition of his works.

He has been called a modern stoic, and was a critical and refined moralist, opposed equally to extreme austerity and self-indulgence. Those writings of his which require notice here are his Discours sur l'inégalite des Richesses; this inequality arises, as he shows, from natural causes. In ch. xliii. (Du

Bien et du Mal Moral) of his Introduction à la Connaissance de l' Esprit Humain he demonstrates that vices never tend to the public good, refuting thus Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, which, however, he does not appear to have known. His often-quoted maxim (No. 310 of the collection), Le Commerce est l'école de la tromperie, shows a curious coincidence of opinion between a highly polished gentleman of the 18th century and the ascetic ecclesiastics of the middle ages, who held that Contrahentibus naturale est se invicem decipere (in bargains people naturally deceive each other).

E. Ca.

VAVASSEUR. SERFDOM became extinct very early in Normandy, and from the 11th century onwards the rural population was divided between freemen (franci) and peasants (rustici). Many of the freemen were called Vavassores; they held land of a lord to whom they paid a rent and RELIEF on entry into possession; they were obliged to be present at his pleas, had to plough a portion of his lands, and to provide him with a horse for his cartage. But in many respects their position was distinguished. Thus in the 13th century they sometimes presented the parson of the parish; in certain fiefs (see MANOR) they were entitled to take wood or feed their cattle in the lord's forests. The vavasseurs of the bishop of Bayeux owed military service on horseback, armed with a lance, a shield, and a sword; elsewhere we hear of vavassores pedites. In old texts a vavassorium is carefully distinguished

from a tenure in VILLENAGE and a bordagium. Still being a non-noble tenure, it could be divided between a great number of owners, but the lord was supposed to deal only with one of them, who collected the rents and was responsible for the rest. This tenant, being supposed to be the eldest of the various sons of one former owner, was called l'aîné: hence the name of aînesses also given to these hold. ings (see SERVICES, PREDIAL AND MILITARY).

[Léopold Delisle, Etudes sur la Condition de la classe agricole en Normandie au Moyen Age, Evreux, 1851, pp. 6-7 and 32.]

E. Ca.

VECTIGALES AGRI signifies land let out by a municipality for a long or indefinite period, subject to the payment of a yearly rent (vectigal). The lessee of such land, as long as he paid his rent, had the rights of an owner over it, though the municipality was considered in law to be the owner.

From

An analogous tenure arose in respect of waste lands of the imperial demesne, which were let out on long lease for the purpose of being planted (agri emphyteuticarii). this latter custom the term emphyteusis (in. planting) was used to signify a long or perpetual lease, by which the tenant (emphyteuta), who fulfilled its conditions, was in the position of a freeholder. Under Constantine and his successors agri vectigales disappeared, becoming in most cases imperial or ecclesiastical property, hence they are not mentioned in the Theodosian code, or in the Corpus Juris of Justinian.

E. A. W.

VELLON. In the old Spanish monetary system this word is used very much in the same way as our "sterling," to denote the standard money of the day. It was attached either to the word "plata or to "real," i.e. plata da vellon or real da vellon. Which of these came first in time it is difficult to say. Barcia defines it as "ordinary copper money. The expression is thought to be derived either from villon or vilis, base; or from the sheep (vellon, fleece) which was stamped on certain old Roman coins. Barcia, with much probability, refers it to the same root as French "BILLON," Ital. “biglione," Eng. "BULLION," with derivation from "bulla,” a round piece and so a coin.

[Barcia's Diccionario de la lengua Española.-Zarolo's Dicc. Encycl. de la lengua Castellana, s.v. Real-Vellon. For the use of the term in currency, see Kelly's Cambist, p. 317.]

С. А. Н.

VEND, NEWCASTLE (1602-1844). The received view that "there is no direct or indirect connection between the ancient and modern forms of trade combination" is contradicted by this "vend," which was once the attribute of a gild (see GILDS), then of a cross between gild and RING, then of a ring; which afterwards inspired simultaneous attempts to renovate the gild and invent TRUSTS, and which now influences the policy of TRADE UNIONS. The history of this missing link is in its earliest

stages difficult, and has not been told; it will therefore be told at length.

"

Preface. In 1600 the Newcastle hostmen were formally incorporated as a gild of exclusive coalfitters for the north of England; "fitting' was defined by the charter (Brand, Hist. of Newcastle, ii. 623-627, 659) as "loading and unloading," but was universally construed as selling for export" (21 Jac. c. 3, § 12; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser., 1655-56, p. 280). But "hostmen and "coal-fitters' were not synonymous; thus we read in 1633 of "hostmen's fitters," and in 1700 of hostmen regulating fitters' charges (M. A. Richardson, Newcastle Reprints, Historical, vol. iii. Conservatorship of the Tyne, p. 81; Brand, ii. 302 n.). A double process was going on. On the one hand, hostmen were expanding (1600-1750) until they embraced nearly all free burgesses, and their significance evaporated; on the other hand, a nucleus of hostmen, described by foes as eighteen or twenty, and by friends as over thirty, and five of whose names have survived (Record Office, State Papers, Domestic, Elisabeth, vol. 263, No. 72; par. 3), were accused in 1590 and 1597 of having converted to their private use collieries leased to the hostmen at large, and of engrossing "all other collieries" (ib. Brand, ii. 269), and, in 1653, of making efforts to retain their monopoly of "leases of the coal-pits" (Conservatorship, p. 26). The fact that certain hostmen were lessees of the Gateshead and Whickham (1590 ?-1681), and of valuable Newcastle collieries (ib. pp. 59, 85; New. Rep., Miscellaneous, Certain Matters, pp. 9, 10), and that sometimes coal-owners (1610), sometimes hostmen, were accused of raising the price of London coal, lends colour to the charge. But the matter does not rest here. These ownerfitters have told us themselves how from the first they usurped the power and, probably, the property of the fitters' gild.

First Period of its History (1602-1768).—The hostmen's gildbook for 1602 contains an "order and agreement of partnership for the vente of coals" by twenty-nine or (counting joint-owners as one) twenty-four hostmen. Their names include the five mentioned in 1597; and they were a majority and commanded the gild, which in 1600 numbered forty-eight. The twenty-four are ranged in four groups; each member of each group may only separately sell so many "tens" of coal, the highest exceeding the lowest quantity, as nine to

one.

This compromise between partnership and severalty suggests the COST-BOOK company, a tenure which still exists among mining adventurers. Moreover it was usual in the next century for Northumbrian mining adventurers to club together like one of these groups, ear-marking and apportioning to each member such and such quantities of coal when sold by their fitter-agent each week (J. Bell, Collieries and Coal Trade, vol. i., a MS. in the Royal Geological Museum, see esp. "Washington Colliery "). Further, people only spoke of "tens" in reference to their own mine, for the "ten" was a private measure varying in each mine. We infer then that the hostmen (or some of them) owned twenty-four collieries, and resolved that they should be worked for "fitting" purposes as one company, by this same nucleus, each for his private

615

use if his "fitting" did not exceed his allotted share. The second document is an agreement of two terms made in 1665" at a meeting of the several principle traders in coals"-so that the gild is there, but unofficially. The first term, signed by twenty-one coal-owners-six of whose names figured in the document of 1602-and by one agent for one of the twenty-one, bound the signatory to close his colliery until the end of the third quarter or thereabouts; one quarter-group must have held aloof from this term. The second term signed by seventeen out of the twenty-one, and by eight others, bound the signatory to raise the price of his coal. Briefly, the twenty-nine coal-owning hostmen of 1602 have been transformed into twenty-nine coal-owners, many of them hostmen. A fluctuating body, held together by what was then thought the frail thread of self-interest, has been substituted for the organic cohesion of the gild. The third document, dated 1768, states the "intended" annual vend of twenty-four collieries for seven years to come, and was perhaps a response to the fitters' lists required by the Septennial Act of 1766 for regulating the Newcastle coal trade. Words of agreement are avoided, as such an agreement would be a crime under 9 Anne c. 28. The ratios of the quantities allotted vary as widely as ten to one. Gild hostmen and fitters, who were then mere agents, have all finally vanished. The singular similarity between these three shreds of evidence seems to prove that a sub-gild-if it may be so called-of coal-owners had detached itself from the doomed and decadent parent gild of owner-fitters, and exercised until 1768 such functions of its parent as concerned coal-owners. If this view is true, those functions-in other words, the vend-comprised the following features, some of which were expressed, and others implied :—

(1) It was a partnership composed of members, who, if they traded beyond a certain point traded as partners, but if they traded up to that point, they traded as though they were private traders and not partners; for this purpose (2) it limited the annual output (3) which it distributed among the collieries in certain proportions. Briefly, it was what 17th century writers called a STINT. Stints were usually annual, and were meant to secure (4) fixed prices. Prices were also directly fixed by the vend of 1665, and before then by the gild (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser., 1655-56, p. 280) or by its "pricers " (Conservatorship, pp. 32, 65; cp. Surtees Society, Newcastle Merchant Adventurers, i. 52); and the act of 1766 assumed that the sellers fixed the "usual prices" of coal; and the coal (5) was put (in 1602) into three classes. So much for the express features; the implied features were as follows: (6) it was a condition of the charter of 1600 that the hostmen should sell direct to shipowners (R. Gardiner, England's Grievance, 1655, ch. ix.), and the act of 1766 assumed that the latter had a right of purchase on tendering "the usual price." (7) Labourers were at that date called "servants," and were hired gild fashion, i.e. by the year and by indenture, providing for payment by piecework and during suspension of work, for exclusive service, and for penalties which the magistrates enforced (5 Eliz. c. 4, § 7:

J. Bell, l.c.). However much the gild ministered to the interests of a class of capitalists, it was true to its ideal of organising industry all round. (8) Nor could it legislate for capitalists or producers as such, but only in so far as they were urban traders of a special kind. Therefore this stint being invented by fitters for fitters could not affect inland trade nor coals consumed at Newcastle. And further the hostmen granted, as the consideration for their charter, a duty on coal exported from the Tyne "to the free people of England," and "spente within this realm and not transported (R. Gardiner, l.c.; Brand, ii. 658); probably, therefore, the grant to them was from the first construed as co-extensive with the grant by them, and they did not regulate "transported' coal. (9) The usual remedies of the decadent gild were fines, boycotting, and warnings.

These features must have characterised the vend of 1602. Their co-existence in the vend of 1768, and persistence during the intermediate period, is inferred from the fact that they were all present when the vend was put under the microscope in the second period of its history. Granted that the second, third, fourth, and ninth features might have often died and been born again, and that the fifth and seventh might have lived on in isolation, it is inconceivable that the first, sixth, and eighth could have existed by themselves, or could have been revived if they had been once suffered to lapse for any length of time at any date after the great rebellion. The theory of survival gives the only possible solution; and survival means an uninterrupted existence from the time when the things surviving had a meaning-namely, from the first half of the 17th century. But we are anticipating.

The second period of its history (1771-1844) is a replica of the first period; each of these nine features recur, but with differences due to an age of movement. London had tapped new sources of supply, and the margin within which the northern coal-owners could dictate terms grew narrower day by day. And there were foes from within. Thus Sunderland, which used Newcastle as its port in 1704 (Brand, ii. 677), soon became independent, but federated with Newcastle in 1771; and the railway of 1825 gave a new outlet to the Tees-side collieries, only some of which joined the confederacy in 1834. Again, the Tyneside collieries, which were of the traditional number (twenty-four) in 1768, were twenty-nine in 1787 (Brand, ii. 688), and forty-two in 1829 (Rep. (1830), vol. viii. p. 316), and although their respective quantities and prices were assigned to each colliery every year 1786-1833, and the "rules" and "agreement" of 1833-34 were elastic as well as permanent, and admitted readjustments from time to time, there were always one or two dissenters. Again, for some years before 1786, and afterwards for parts of years, corporate trading broke down and competition came romping in. It was an age of intermittent individualism. Ideas had also moved, and the coal-owners forgot their origin in the gild, and passed themselves off as a ring. This gild-ring-if it may be called so -was investigated by at least five committees in 1800, 1830 (bis), 1836, 1837-38, yet the word

gild was never whispered by one committeeman nor by one witness; all accepted as history the legend that before 1771 there was competition, and then for the first time the coal-owners combined in order to defeat the rings on the London market-yet the coal-owners revived these very rings after their abolition in 1831! Truly, the industrial revolution had, in twenty-nine years (1771-1800), swept men's memories clean, and turned their minds topsy-turvy. Lastly, these dupes of a legend invented apologies which are of unique interest as made by men to whom economic history before 1771 was a blank.

...

"

As to (2) and (3), the apologists said that the agreement did not create a MONOPOLY (Rep. (1836), p. 12, and that the appointed annual totals exceeded the demand, and therefore were hypothetical figures for calculating proportions, and giving the weak a chance of sharing with the strong; yet many of the collieries worked half (Rep. (1830), pp. 267, 301) or one-third (Rep. (1836), vol. xi. pp. xv., 80) power under the vend, and the so-called weak often fared best when the vend was off (Rep. (1836), pp. 11, 24). Even thus Wheeler (1601) wrote of the stint, that it was not a monopoly, and that it was double of the supply (he was defending traders against producers, not producers against consumers), and therefore operated only as an "economical apportioning among the brethren of the companie of the . . . benefits of the same, so that the wealthier sort are kept from engrossing the whole trade." As for (4), "regulation' 66 or order" kept prices stable (this was disproved in Rep. (1871), vol xviii.; Rep. E., App., p. 208), and was more "economical than the " 'open or "fighting system which produced the same result at the cost of "confused" and "wasteful" alternations between over-cheapness and over-dearness (Rep. (1800), vol. xxvi. pp. 30, 31; (1830), pp. 295, 304). This language is natural to men who dread competition as an unknown power, and recurs on almost every page of 17th century opponents of "free trade (individualism). for (6), the plea that working coal is incompatible with freighting and sending coal to market (ib. pp. 415, 472)-although these incompatibles were habitually combined when the vend was off-is redolent of the middle ages, which separated trades as we do professions. As for (7), annual wages, they said, necessitated an annual price-list (ib. p. 422; (1836), p. 81)—the converse would have been equally near the mark, for most gild arrangements are annual. (8) The exclusion from the vend of coal sent inland, abroad, to the Orkneys, and to Ireland (Rep. (1830), pp. 433, 463) and, (5) the absurd trichotomy (ib. 469, 470; (1800), 14, 100), were noted but not explained; so was the partnership scheme (1), under which each paid calls proportionate to his appointed share in the sales (Rep. (1836), p. 18), and each took in severalty what he sold within the prescribed limit, but accounted as partner to the other coal-owners for any excess (Rep. (1800), pp. 19, 20, 98); indeed, a continuous history from the time when one company owned every mine furnished the only possible key. As for (9), fines were, under the constitution of 1833, secured by

As

deposit, but warnings (Rep. (1837-38), vol. xv. p. 91) and boycottings (ib. 89, 90, 265; (1836), p. 22) were the usual penalties.

The spirit, as well as the institutions, of the gild dominated this ring, though much was inexplicable when they proclaimed "self-interest their primum mobile" (Rep. (1836), p. 92). Industry was in a semi-conscious customary stage, and men only expected to justify part of what they did; and justified that part by repeating, as faithfully and unconsciously as parrots, all the old sophisms forged by the founders of the systemfor it was a system every part of which cohered until the last. When one prop was removed, the entire edifice collapsed.

Its Death (1844-45).-Between 1837 and 1843 two collieries were worked by joint-stock companies, to which gild methods would be ULTRA VIRES. After 1834 the London Gas Company defied the sixth rule, and treated with the producer direct (ib. pp. 37, 42, 193-203). The competition of certain Tees-side collieries, which would not join the vend, sent prices down and production up, and induced the masters to snap what looked like the least essential link in the chain-the seventh-and to dictate a monthly in lieu of the old annual bond. The Tyneside, Wearside, and Tees-side miners struck against the new bond (Rep. (1873), vol. x. p. 304; Fynes, Miners of Northumberland and Durham, pp. 62, 77, 104) and lost. the spell was broken, and the masters never even proposed to resuscitate what they had renounced, but only such parts of it as appealed to their class interest.

But

Its Successors: a Modernised Gild (1844).— Mr. Lambert writes, in Two Thousand Years of Gild Life (p. 368), that if in some national trade masters and men combined to regulate output prices, profits, and wages, this would be the nearest conceivable reproduction of the gild as it was 300 years ago. He seems unaware that a proposal to regulate the English coal trade on this basis was made by the miners, and rejected by the masters in 1844 (Fynes, p. 50).

The Trust (1845).-The leaders of the gild-ring tried, and only just failed, to erect on its ruins a joint-stock company composed of north of England coal-owners, and with the object of reviving the second, third, and fourth features of the vend (Rep. (1873), pp. 297 et seq.).

The Trade Union.-In 1836 both masters and miners wished to restrict output (Rep. (1836), p. xv. n.), and this policy has since then been often put into practice by the miners with the avowed object of raising prices (Rep. (1873), p. 10); indeed this policy and object were the raison d'être of the coal strike of 1893.

The proposal of 1844, and the strike of 1844-45, were bids for the succession to the traditions of the vend; and when in 1845 the gild-ring tried to pass on its diminished torch to a trust, the miners snatched it from their hand.

[For the "order and agreement" of 1602, see Brand, Hist. of Newcastle, ii. 273, 274 n.; for "agreement" of 1665, see Reports from Commissioners (1871), vol. xviii. Rep. of Committee, E., p. 8; for that of 1768, ib., App., p. 3; for "rules" and "agreement" of 1833-34, see Reports

617

| of Committees (1836), vol. xi. Rep. of Committee on the Coal Trade, pp. 6-9. Tables and accounts illustrating different vends are given in the Report

of 1871, App., p. 3 [1768].—Reports of Committees (1800), vol. xxvi. Report on the Coal Trade, p. 98 [1799]. Reports of Committees (1830), vol. viii. Rep. of Lords' Committee on the Coal Trade, pp. 57, 58 (or 461, 462) [1828].Rep. of Com. (1836), vol. xi. Report of Committee on the Coal Trade, pp. 246 et seq. [1835-36], pp. 52-55 [1836].]

J. D. R.

VENDOR AND PURCHASER. The normal sale of land is in English law a process with three stages.

an

(1) First there is the formation of the contract for sale. The vendor usually embodies his offer in two documents: (a) particulars of sale which specify the locality and size of the estate, and must state if it is anything less than an estate in fee simple in possession free from incumbrances; (b) conditions of sale which state the time and mode in which details belonging to the second and third stages shall take effect. The acceptance of the vendor's offer must be signed by the purchaser and must refer to the parties, subject matter, and price. If verbal, it is unenforceable unless the parties have acted on it to an irrevocable extent. (2) The effect of the first stage is to introduce a stage intermediate between contract and conveyance; or in technical language, the ownership has passed in equity but not in law from vendor to purchaser. During this stage, which remotely resembles an action conducted without (until 1874) an oral hearing, the vendor may not damage nor alter the character of the property in possession of which he still remains but as constructive trustee; and he must prove his title in the method prescribed by rules which have grown up in the courts of equity, and are contained but not codified in the Vendor and Purchaser Act 1874, and The Conveyancing Acts 1881, pt. ii. and 1882, or by the conditions agreed on in the contract for sale, or more often by a mixture of these public rules and private conditions. If or in so far as there are no conditions, the contract is called open contract," and the rules prevail; but the conditions, unless expressed ambiguously or in a manner calculated to mislead, modify or replace the rules. If the contract is "open" the vendor must produce an abstract of all documents and events material to his title, and must produce originals of deeds, marriage and death certificates, etc., for verification with the abstract, and the abstract so verified must prove that he has power to sell the property in the way in which he has offered to sell it. The proof need only go back forty years, and must be as strict as in an action, but facts recited in documents twenty years old prove themselves; and purchasers of leaseholds cannot call for the freehold title. There are few titles which can pass unscathed through this ordeal; but the purchaser must point out flaws to the vendor within reasonable time, or else it will be assumed that he has waived them. Conditions of sale are usually framed preventing the purchaser from making these objections, or enabling the vendor to meet them by statutory declarations, by compensation, or by some answer which would not, in the absence of such conditions, be binding. If there are no flaws of title or all flaws are waived, adjusted, or removed, the vendor's case against the purchaser is complete, and the purchaser completes his case against the vendor by tendering to him the price and a deed of conveyance which is in accordance with and, if properly drawn, supersedes the preliminary contract and negotiations. Disputes on these matters or on any isolated points which do not affect the validity of the contract as a whole are, since 1874, settled by summary oral procedure in the chancery division. (3) With the execution of the conveyance and payment of the price, which until payment is a lien on the property, the relation of vendor and purchaser ceases, and the estate which the vendor had power to convey, vests in the purchaser. Up to that date they have been united by numerous reciprocal duties. The most important duty is not to mislead; and the vendor, and in rare cases the purchaser, have the additional duty to disclose "latent" defects which the other

party has no means of discovering for himself. Breaches of duty by one party, unless condoned or written off against breaches of duty by the other party, disentitle him to equitable relief. Equitable relief is now administered by the chancery division, and consists of the following ascending scale of remedies: (1) the court remains neutral; (2) or grants damage in lieu of specific performance; (3) or specific performance (a) of the contract (b) plus a new term, or (c) plus compensation making good any breach of duty; (4) rescinds the contract, and if purchaser is plaintiff, may order his deposit (if any) to be returned with interest, and may charge the property therewith; (5) orders the contract to be delivered up and cancelled. If equitable relief is not asked for an action for damages for breach of contract or for TonT (Law Reports, 1891, 2 Q.B. 456) or for money had and received, may be brought in the Queen's Bench division, or in minor cases in the county court.

Exceptional Cases. Where land is sold by forced sale to a public body under the Lands' Clauses' Act 1845, parties under disability may contract to sell and sell, the purchaser may enter into possession after paying a deposit and on giving a bond, conveyance vests in the purchaser, all estates which have been paid for, and outstanding estates when they are paid for, and if the vendor will not convey the purchaser may dispense with it. Briefly (1) the capacity to contract is enlarged; (2) the completion of the contract takes effect as an out-and-out sale in certain cases. Otherwise the process is as above.

The provisions for registration in the Land Transfer Acts 1875 and 1897 alter the whole process described in the above. The purchaser of registered land acquires no property by the conveyance, but acquires the entire ownership by entry on the registry; and no investiga tion of title takes place in the case of an absolute title. In so far as the title is registered as less than absolute the ordinary rules prevail. The act of 1897 is the first to contain compulsory provisions; which, however, do not come into force in any district unless adopted by the county council.

[E. Sugden, Vendors and Purchasers of Estates, 1805, 1862.-J. H. Dart, Vendors and Purchasers of Real Estate, 1888.]

J. D. R.

VENTURI, GIAMBATTISTA (1746-1822). Born at Bibbiano (Reggio Emilia). He was an abbé and a man of great and varied attainments, he studied mathematics and physics, literature and history. He occupied himself greatly with economic and financial questions on these subjects, wrote and held discussions with able economists. He held many public offices in the duchy of Modena, was professor of geometry and physics at the university, state engineer, and assayer of the mint. Later on he held offices in the government of the Cisalpine republic.

Among his works of interest to economists is a report illustrating the advantages of the decimal system, his Pareri di finanza, preserved in manuscript in the archives of Modena. MONTANARI attributed to Venturi an anonymous article published in the Nuovo giornale dei letterati d'Italia, printed in Modena in 1773; in this work the author reviews the Meditazioni sull' economia politica by VERRI, he mainly discusses the theory of value, and fiercely criticises the mathematical method applied to political economy, used by Frisi, who edited Verri, in a series of notes on his work-Rapporto della commissione di commercio, etc., sopra il sistema da adottarsi nelle nuove misure, monete e pesi della repubblica, 1798.Pareri di finanza (manuscript). [De Brignoli, Memoria biografica del cavalier abate Giambattista Venturi, 1835.-Montanari, La teoria matematica del valore ed uno scrittore emiliano del secolo scorso, 1891.] U. R.

VENUSTI, M. ANTONIO MARIA

(16th

century), was the author of two works on commerce, one containing a defence of trade, particularly of wholesale trade; the other a development of a theory on value, which, though unoriginal and obviously inspired by the doctrines of ARISTOTLE and S. THOMAS AQUINAS, merits mention for the fluency of its explanations.

Venusti examines into the elements of a just price (see JUSTUM PRETIUM) which he considers to be the one prevailing at the time and place of a contract-the circumstances of selling and buying, the quantity of goods and money, the number of buyers and sellers, and the convenience and usefulness of the bargain, according to the judgment of upright men incapable of dishonesty.

Venusti makes a minute analysis of these elements, illustrating them by the theory of SUPPLY AND DEMAND, and to some extent opposing this by the theory of cost of production, asserting that giusto prezzo springs from abundance or scarcity of goods, and of merchants and money, not from cost, labour, or risk.

Discorso d' intorno alla mercantia.-Istitutione dei mercanti: both published in one volume entitled Compendio utilissimo di quelle cose le quali a nobili e christiani mercanti appartengono, 1591 [Gobbi, L'economia politica negli scrittori itali ani del secolo XVI-XVII., 1889.-Montanari, Contributo alla storia della teoria del valore 1889.] U. R.

VERDERERS. See FORESTS, Mediæval. VERGANI, PAOLO (18th century). The author of an important work on the customhouses of the papal states, containing many facts and intelligent opinions. Vergani studies the principles of customs regulations, and in particular the tariff of customs duties established by Pius VI., at the same time he explains the ideas of the day on customs duties in the most civilised states.

He advocates moderate and temporary protection; criticises the PHYSIOCRATS, and explains the point of view they started from in order to support absolute freedom in trade; he combats the theory that agriculture, and above all things the cultivation of cereals, constitutes the only true wealth of a nation; he would establish a new financial system in the papal states promoting manufacture. Vergani starts from the principle of protection for national industries, with a corresponding system of taxation, at least until other states adopt a similar taxation, and until the industries have reached a certain degree of development. admits, like VERRI, that if all nations agreed to abolish the taxation of goods, then universal and unlimited freedom would not be injurious to the arts. He also studies the details of customs duties and advises the transformation of duties ad valorem into specific duties, thus showing his perception of the most correct system of technical taxation.

He

Vergani treats the subject of customs duties with great breadth, and his book may be regarded as a complete treatise on the subject-its breadth of ideas, wide technical observation and clear