THE machinery for the distribution of commodities has, in this and in all other "progressive" countries, necessarily undergone many changes; but whether these changes have been beneficial to the community, or not, this is not the place for me to inquire; all I have to do here is to set forth the order of such changes, and to show the position that the hawker and pedlar formerly occupied in the state.

The "distributor" of the produce of the country is necessarily a kind of go-between, or middleman, introduced for the convenience of bringing together the producer and consumer—the seller and the buyer of commodities. The producer of a particular commodity being generally distinct from the consumer, it follows, that either the commodity must be carried to the consumer, or the consumer go to the commodity. To save time and trouble to both parties, it seems to have been originally arranged that producer and consumer should meet, periodically, at appointed places. Such periodical meetings of buyers and sellers still exist in this and many other countries, and are termed either fairs or markets, according as they are held at long or short intervals—the fair being generally an annual meeting, and the market a weekly . In the olden time the peculiar characteristic of these commercial congregations was, that the producer and consumer came into immediate contact, without the intervention of any middleman. The fair or market seemed to be a compromise between the , as to the inconvenience of either finding the other when wanted. The producer brought his goods, so to speak, half way to the consumer, while the consumer travelled half way to the goods. "There would be a great waste of time and trouble," says Stewart Mill, "and an inconvenience often amounting to impracticability, if consumers could only obtain the article they want by treating directly with the producers. Both producers and consumers are too much scattered, and the latter often at too great a distance from the former."

"To diminish this loss of time and labour," continues Mr. Mill, "the contrivance of fairs and markets was early had recourse to, where consumers and producers might periodically meet, without any intermediate agency; and this plan still answers tolerably well for many articles, especially agricultural produce—agriculturists having at some seasons a certain quantity of spare time on their hands. But even in this case, attendance is often very troublesome and inconvenient to buyers who have other occupations, and do not live in the immediate vicinity; while, for all articles the production of which requires continuous attention from the producers, these periodical markets must be held at such considerable intervals, and the wants of the consumers must either be provided for so long beforehand, or must remain so long unsupplied, that even before the resources of society permitted the establishment of shops, the supply of those wants fell universally into the hands of , the pedlars who might appear once a month, being preferred to the fair, which only returned once a year. In country districts, remote from towns or large villages, the vocation of the pedlar is not yet wholly superseded. But a dealer who has a fixed abode, and fixed customers," continues Mr. Mill, "is so much more to be depended on, that customers prefer resorting to him, if he is conveniently accessible; and dealers, therefore, find their advantage in esta-

Thus we see that the pedlar was the original distributor of the produce of the country—the primitive middleman, as well as the prime mover in extending the markets of particular localities, or for particular commodities. He was, as it were, the "free-trader;" increasing the facilities for the interchange of commodities, without regard to market dues or tolls, and carrying the natural advantages of particular districts to remote and less favoured places; thus enabling each locality to produce that special commodity for which it had the greatest natural convenience, and exchanging it for the peculiar produce of other parts.

Now, this extension of the markets necessarily involved some machinery for the conveyance of the goods from district to another. Hence, the pedlar was not only the original merchant, but the primitive carrier—to whom, perhaps, we owe both our turnpike-roads and railways. For, since the peculiar characteristic of the pedlar was the carrying the produce to the consumer, rather than troubling the consumer to go after the produce, of course it soon became necessary, as the practice increased, and increased quantities of goods had to be conveyed from part of the country to another, that increased facilities of transit should be effected. The change was from the pack- to the pack- for the former a foot-way alone was required; while the latter necessitated the formation of some kind of a road. Some of these ancient pack-horse roads existed till within these few years. Hagbush-lane, which was described by William Hone only years ago, but which has now vanished, was the ancient bridle or packhorse road from London to the North, and extended by the Holloway back road as far as the City-road, near . "Some parts of Hagbush-lane," says Hone, "are much lower than the meadows on either side." At time a terraced ridge, at another a deep rut, the pack-horse road must have been to the unaccustomed traveller a somewhat perilous pass. The historian of Craven, speaking of , says, "At this time the communication between the north of England and the Universities was kept up by the carriers, who pursued their long but uniform route with trains of pack-horses. To their care were consigned packages, and not unfrequently the persons of young scholars. It was through their medium, also, that epistolary correspondence was managed; and as they always visited London, a letter could scarcely be exchanged between Yorkshire and Oxford in less time than a month." The General was established by Act of Parliament in the year , and all letters were to be sent through this office, "except such letters as shall be sent by coaches, common-known carriers of goods by carts, waggons, and pack-horses, and shall be carried along with their carts, waggons, and pack-horses respectively."

"There is no such conveyance as a waggon in this country" (Scotland), says Roderick Random, referring to the beginning of the last century, "and my finances were too weak to support the expense of hiring a horse. I determined therefore to set out with the carriers, who transport goods from place to another on horseback; and this scheme I accordingly put in execution on the , sitting on a pack-saddle between baskets, of which contained my goods in a knapsack. But by the time we arrived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I was so fatigued with the tediousness of the carriage, and benumbed with the coldness of the weather, that I resolved to travel the rest of my journey on foot, rather than proceed in such a disagreeable manner."

The present mode of travelling, compared with that of the pack-horse means of conveyance as pursued of old, forms of the most striking contrasts, perhaps, in all history.

Hence we see that the pedlar was originally both carrier and seller; conveying his pack on his back, and then, as it increased in bulk, transferring it to the back of "the pack-horse." But as soon as the practice of conveying the commodities to the buyers, instead of compelling the buyers to go to the commodities, was found to be advantageous to both consumer and producer, it was deemed expedient that the distinct processes of carriage and sale, which are included in the distribution of commodities, should be conducted by distinct persons, and hence the carrying and selling of goods became separate vocations in the State; and such is now the machinery by which the commodities of different parts of this country, as well as of others, are at present diffused over the greater portion of this kingdom. In remote districts however, and the poorer neighbourhoods of large towns, where there are either too few consumers, or too few commodities required now to support a fixed distributor with a distinct apparatus of transit, the pedlar still continues to be the sole means of diffusing the produce of locality among the inhabitants of another; and it is in this light—as the poor man's merchant—that we must here consider him.

Among the more ancient of the trades, then, carried on in England is that of the hawker or pedlar. It is generally considered, as I said before, that hawking "is as ancient a mode of trade as that carried on in fairs and markets, towns and villages, as well as at the castles of the nobles or the cottages of their retainers." To fix the origin of fairs is impossible, for, in ancient and mediæval times, every great gathering was necessarily a fair. Men—whom it is no violence to language to call "hawkers"—resorted alike to the Olympic games and to the festivals of the early Christian saints, to sell or barter their wares. Of our English fairs Mr. Jacob says, in his "Law Dictionary"— "Various privileges have been annexed to them, and numerous facilities afforded to the disposal of property in them. To give them a greater degree of solemnity, they were originally, both in the ancient and modern world, associated with religious festivals. In most places, indeed, they are still held on the same day with the wake or feast of the saint to whom the church is dedicated; and till the practice was prohibited, it was customary

The hawker dealt, in the old times, more in textile fabrics than in anything else. Indeed, Shakspere has dashed off a catalogue of his wares, in the song of

Lawn as white as driven snow,

Cyprus black as e'er was crow.

In the reigns succeeding the termination of the Wars of the Roses, and down to the Commonwealth, the hawker's pack was often stocked with costly goods; for great magnificence in dress was then the custom of the wealthy, and even the burgesses on public occasions wore velvet, fine cambric ruffs, and furs. The hawker was thus often a man of substance and frequently travelled on horseback, with his wares slung in bags on his horse's side, or fitted to the crupper or pommell of his saddle. He was often, moreover, attended by a man, both for help in his sales, and protection in travelling. In process of time an established hawker became the medium of news and of gossip, and frequently the bearer of communications from town to town. His profits were often great, but no little trust seems to have been reposed in him as to the quality and price of his goods; and, until the present century or so, slop goods were little manufactured, so that he could not so well practise deceptions. Neither, during the prosperity of the trade, does it appear that any great degree of dishonesty characterized the hawker, though to this there were of course plenty of minor exceptions as well as glaring contradiction. The wreckers of our southern coasts, who sometimes became possessed of rich silks, velvets, laces, &c.—(not unfrequently murdering all the mariners cast on shore, and there was a convenient superstition among the wreckers, that it was unlucky to offer help to a drowning man) —disposed of much of their plunder to the hawkers; and as communication was slow, even down to Mr. Palmer's improvements in the in , the goods thus rescued from the deep, or obtained by the murder of the mariners, were disposed of even before the loss of the vessel was known at her destination; for we are told that there was generally a hawker awaiting a wreck on the most dangerous shores of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Sussex.

During the last century, and for the years of the present, the hawker's was a profitable calling. He usually in later times travelled with horse and covered cart, visiting fairs, markets, and private houses, more especially in the country. In some parts the calling was somewhat hereditary, son succeeding to father after having officiated as his assistant, and so becoming known to the customers. The most successful of the class, alike on both sides of the border, were Scotchmen.

In the prosperity of this trade experienced a check. In that year "every hawker, pedlar, or petty chapman going from town to town, or to other men's houses, and travelling on foot, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods" was required to pay a yearly licence of , with an additional for every horse, ass, or mule, used in the business. Nothing, however, in the Act in question, Geo. III. c. , as I have before intimated, "extended to prohibit" the hawking for sale of "any fish, fruit, or victuals" without licence. Neither is there any extension of the prohibition to the unlicensed workers or makers of any goods or wares, or their children or servants resident with them, hawking such goods, and selling them "in every city, borough, town corporate, or market town," but not in villages or country places. "Tinkers, coopers, glaziers, plumbers, and harness-menders," are likewise permitted to carry about with them the proper materials necessary for their business, no licence being necessary.

The passing of this Act did not materially check the fraudulent practices of which the hawkers were accused, and of which a portion of them were doubtlessly guilty; indeed some of the manufacturers, whose names were pirated by the hawkers, were of opinion that the licensing for or years facilitated fraud, as many people, both in London and the country, thought they were safe in dealing with a "licensed" hawker, since he could not procure a licence without a certificate of his good character from the clergyman of his place of residence, and from "reputable inhabitants." Linen of good quality used to be extensively hawked, but from to , or later in some parts, the hawkers got to deal in an inferior quality, "unions" (a mixture of linen and cotton), glazed and stiffened, and set off with gaudy labels bearing sometimes the name of a well-known firm, but altered in spelling or otherwise, and expressed so as to lead to the belief that such a firm were the manufacturers of the article. Jews, moreover, as we have seen, travelled in all parts with inferior watches and jewellery, and sometimes "did well" by persuading the possessors of old solid watches, or old seals or jewellery, that they were ridiculously out of fashion, and so inducing them to give money along with the old watch for a watch or other article of the newest fashion, which yet was intrinsically valueless compared with the other. These and other practices, such as selling inferior lace under pretence of its having been smuggled from France, and of the choicest quality, tended to bring the hawker's trade into disrepute, and the disrepute affected the honest men in the business. Some sank from the possession of a good horse and cart to travelling on foot, as of yore, forwarding goods from place to place by the common carriers, and some relinquished the itinerant trade altogether. The "cutting" and puffing shopkeepers appeared next, and at once undersold the "slop" hawker, and foiled him on his own ground of pushing off inferior wares for the best. The numbers of the hawkers fell off considerably, but notwithstanding I find, in the last census tables (), the following returns as to the numbers of "hawkers, hucksters, and pedlars," distributed throughout Great Bri-

Thus we find that, in , there were of these trades in

The counties in which the hawkers, hucksters, and pedlars most abound appear to be—, Lancaster; , Middlesex; , Yorkshire (West Riding); , Lanark; and , Surrey.

What rule, if any rule, was observed in classing these "hawkers, hucksters, and pedlars," or what distinction was drawn between a hawker and a huckster, I am unable to say, but it is certain that the number of "licensed hawkers" was within -half of the ; for, in , the hawkers' duty realized only gross revenue, and waiving the amount paid for the employment of horses, &c., the official return, reckoning so many persons paying each, shows only licensed hawkers in .

The hawker's business has been prosecuted far more extensively in country than in town, but he still continues to deal in London.