commerce; from its shores the products of the east were carried overland to the centre of Europe, thence to England and even to the Baltic coasts. The route by the Caspian and southern Russia, through which a scanty trade between Asia and Europe had been conducted in the dark ages, was henceforth almost entirely neglected.

Next to the development of trade due to the crusading movements must be ranked the advance of industry. The products of the east had to be purchased by those of Europe; thus an enormous stimulus was given to manufactures and agriculture. And not only were the old industries developed, but many new ones were actually introduced from the east. From Greece came the manufacture of silk and the cultivation of the mulberry. From Tyre the Venetians learnt the art of making glass, an industry which they retain still, long after the days of their decline. The crusaders introduced from Africa the cultivation of maize and the sugar-cane. In Damascus they learnt notable improvements in the working of metals, and the making of cloth.

The increase of trade and manufactures led to the growth and rise of towns, one of the most important results of the crusades. The greatest immediate profit was reaped by the Italian cities, Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Amalfi, etc. Increase of trade and manufactures also brought wealth to the German towns in the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine, to the communes of France, to the trading and manufacturing cities of Flanders, finally to the north German towns, which formed the famous HANSEATIC LEAGUE (q.v.) The traders required protection from lawless oppression and from piracy. This was acquired in the north by combination, in the south by the promulgation of the earliest codes of maritime law, and generally by the acquisition of municipal privileges and independence. The crusades owed their origin to the spirit of religion and of chivalry. They gave the popes a vast increase of secular authority; they led to the institution of religious orders, like the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carthusians; and of the military orders of the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights. But their ultimate results were fatal to the interests which they at first promoted. The contact with the east gave the first stimulus to the freedom of thought which was destined to destroy the superstitions on which rested the religious unity of Europe. The rise of the burgher class was followed by the rise of the spirit of nationality—both fatal to the class institutions of feudalism and chivalry. The nobles who fought in the crusades were compelled to find money by the sale of privileges to the towns, of their lands to the highest bidder, of freedom to their serfs. The social changes thus produced destroyed the mediaval

CULPA. An expression of Roman law expressing the want of proper diligence. The Roman jurists distinguished between culpa levis and culpa lata, and mediæval writers introduced a third degree of culpa which they called culpa levissima. Culpa lata, i.e. gross negligence, was treated nearly in the same way as unlawful intention (dolus). In some contractual and

other relations there was no absolute standard for the degree of diligence required; the persons concerned had to give the same amount of care as they were accustomed to give to their own affairs. The omission of this degree of diligence is called culpa in concreto by medieval writers.

E. S.

CULPEPER, SIR THOMAS, the elder (15781662), author of A Tract against the high rate of Usurie, 1621, which, "presented to the high court of parliament," conduced to the reduction of the legal rate of interest from ten to eight per cent in 1624. The tract was reprinted with additions in 1641. The author meanwhile "set forth another treatise to evince the necessity of reducing money from eight to six" (preface to the Discourse of Sir Thomas Culpeper the younger), namely A Tract against the high rate of Usurie, 1640 (Brit. Mus., 1093 b. 98). The two treatises were reprinted together, with a preface, by Sir Thomas Culpeper the younger, 1688.

F. Y. E.

CULPEPER, SIR THOMAS, the younger (1626-1697), a worthy son of the elder knight, assailed usury in a Discourse dated 1688. Thomas Manley, gent., answered this discourse, maintaining that "as it is the scarcity of money (and many borrowers) that maketh the high rates of interest, ... so the plenty of money and few borrowers will make the rates low." Culpeper retorted with The necessity of abating Usury reasserted, 1670. Some other publications on the same subject are ascribed to Culpeper (Wood's Athen. Oxon., ch. iv. p. 447).

F. Y. E.

CULTURE, LARGE AND SMALL. The question of large or small holdings may be treated morally, socially, and economically. Here it will mainly be discussed in the latter aspect. It is the physical formation of a country which chiefly determines the size of holdings. It may be laid down as an axiom that, where the soil and climate are specially adapted for cereals and sheep, and where the physical configuration of the country admits of

large enclosures, there large holdings are the most productive. On the other hand, where districts are hilly, the soil rocky, the surface broken, or where soil and climate are specially favourable to permanent grass, there small holdings are best. It follows that, as a rule, grass counties have most, and corn counties have fewest, small holdings. But there are exceptions. Near large towns, small holdings will necessarily pay best. A small holding is a relative term. It differs in size when the holding is a market garden, a grass farm, or an arable land. A man may make his living off a very small tract of market-garden land, or off 5 acres of grass. It is doubtful whether an arable farmer, solely dependent upon the produce of the soil, and not engaged in any other profitable occupation, can live on less than 40 acres. All holdings may therefore be considered small which are 50 acres or under. In England there were, in 1887, 294,729 small holdings, consisting in the aggregate of 3,559,000 acres (see Journal of the Statistical Society, February 1887. Paper by Major Craigie on the "Size and Distribution of Agricultural Holdings"). In England, small holdings are undoubtedly increasing. This increase arises from the fall in the price of cereals, the diminished capital of large farmers, the growing number of men who combine farming with other avocations. It cannot be questioned that grain, meat, and wool can be produced more economically upon large farms, and that dairy produce, pork, poultry, eggs, vegetables, are best suited for small holdings. farming is not profitable for small farmers, because the initial outlay is large, the crops precarious, and the profits unreliable. dairying small farmers enjoy no advantage over large. But in pigs, poultry, calf-rearing, vegetables, where minute care and attention secure safe and quick returns, the advantage is all in favour of small holdings. In these limited products, small farms are economically preferable to large, and chiefly for these reasons. While labour has increased in price and deteriorated in quality, small farmers hire no labourers and employ the best that is procurable their own. Again, the depression in prices has most particularly affected the produce of large farms, and has fallen comparatively lightly on the produce of small holdings, which is also of a more varied kind. The eggs of large farmers are in one basket, and the bottom has either fallen out or is rickety. The eggs of small farmers are stored in several baskets and the bottoms are relatively secure. Again, small farmers, selling direct to consumers, not only feel the fall of prices less, but eliminate the profits of middlemen. Lastly, small farmers are under fewer temptations to extravagance. They are more frugal and more industrious. They are sparing

Fruit

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of everything except their labour, prodigal of nothing but themselves. Employing no hired labour, practising mixed husbandry, rearing stock instead of feeding them, often enjoying common rights, doing the work of two labourers and eating the food of one, small farmers weather storms which wreck their richer brethren. But

It

it is a false argument that small farmers are necessarily more profitable to the community than large farmers, because the former pay higher rents. They undoubtedly pay higher rents; but they do so because the competition for holdings of this class is especially keen, because the expenses of buildings, approaches, hedges, and repairs are far heavier on small than on large farms, and because the land devoted to small farms is, as compared with ordinary agricultural land, what may be called accommodation land. In point of material comfort, wage-earning labourers in constant employment are better off than small farmers, whether they own or occupy the soil. cannot, for instance, be questioned that the English agricultural labourer is better housed, better fed, and better clothed than the French peasant proprietor. Wherever a peasant proprietary prevails, except under most favourable conditions, the rural populations live hard, fare hard, and are on the border-line of starvation. In point of production, the product per acre in England exceeds that of any country on the continent except East Flanders. In point of agricultural science, English farming is, speaking generally, more advanced than in countries where the small culture of peasant proprietors prevails. Belgium affords a noticeable example of the stagnation which is produced by the multiplication of small cultivators. Half a century ago the agriculture of Belgium was the first in Europe. Since then the size of the farms has decreased, and the number of small farmers continuously increased. Enterprise and experiment diminished with the extension of la petite culture. Farming has rather retrograded than advanced; the stock, and especially the sheep, have decreased; the small farmer only raises, and only eats, pork. In point of pauperism, rural England has fewer paupers than countries where small culture is the rule. In Prussia the number of peasant heads of families exempted from direct taxation because their earnings are less than £25 a year, amounted in 1888 to nearly 7 millions. In France 3 millions out of the 7 million proprietors are unable to contribute largely to state objects by reason of poverty. In point of encumbrances, the soil of England is less burdened with mortgages than the land of countries farmed by small cultivating owners. In France, for example, the real owners of the soil are local money-lenders, and in some departments 80 per cent of the land is said to be mortgaged. Small culture cannot be regarded

472

as an agricultural panacea.

in England under the economic conditions
mentioned above.

[Reports to the Royal Commission on Agricul-
ture, 1881 and 1882, especially those of the late
Mr. Jenkins. James Howard, Continental Farm-
ing and Peasantry (1870).-Lady Verney, Cottier
Owners, etc. (1885).-W. Beauclerk, Rural Italy,
(1888).-J. S. Mill, Principles of Pol. Econ.]

CURRENCY. This word is sometimes em-
ployed in the sense of circulating medium,
sometimes in the sense of standard of value.
Adam Smith says (book iv. ch. iii.), in the well-
known Digression concerning Banks of Deposit,
particularly concerning that of Amsterdam,
"The currency of a great state, such as France
or England, generally consists almost entirely
of its own coin." Here a standard of value is
referred to, and the constancy of the "Bank
Money" of the bank of Amsterdam is mentioned
as one of its advantages. Adam Smith's com-
parison of the currency to the road which con-
veys the produce of a country to market (Wealth
of Nations, book ii. ch. ii.), and J. S. Mill's de-
scription of it as "a machinery for doing quickly
and commodiously what would be done, though
less quickly and commodiously, without it"
(Principles of Political Economy, book iii. ch. vii.
§ 3), illustrate the services which the currency
performs. An ideally perfect system of currency,
to be based on a system of tabulatory prices, is
dealt with by Jevons, Investigations in Currency
and Finance. Some idea of the same kind
appears to have passed before the mind of D.
Ricardo, Proposals for an Economical and Secure
Currency (Ricardo's Works, 2nd ed. p. 397).
His definition of a perfect currency is as follows:
"A currency may be considered as perfect of
which the standard is invariable, which always
conforms to that standard, and in the use of
which the utmost economy is practised." A
tabular standard of value was suggested by

contracts through reference to the prices of
different articles. A similar method was recom-
mended by G. Poulett Scrope, whose remark,
"without stability of value money is a mere
fraud," goes to the root of the matter. The
subject had also been considered by G. R. Porter.
Mr. Giffen has more recently carried on the in-
vestigation. The idea of a standard of value
to remain as far as possible constant, is included
in the principle on which CORN RENTS (q.v.) are
based (see also CIRCULATING MEDIUM; INDEX
NUMBERS, etc.)

[Jevons, Investigations in Currency and Fin-
ance.-Ricardo's Works, ed. M'Culloch.-Joseph
Lowe, The Present State of England in regard to
Agriculture, Trade, and Finance, 1822.-G.
Poulett Scrope, Principles of Political Economy,
1833.-Porter, Progress of the Nation, 1815.]

CURRENCY DOCTRINE OR PRINCIPLE.
A name given to a doctrine or opinion which
supplies the basis for the method adopted by
Sir R. Peel when regulating the paper currency
by the Bank Act of 1844.
It appears to have
been first used by Mr. G. W. Norman, who, in
his evidence before the House of Commons
Committee on Banks of Issue, 1840, Q. 2018,
speaking of the circulation, referred to
66 cur-
rency principles, according to which it would
increase or decrease with increase or decrease of
bullion.' The evidence of Mr. Gilbart, before
the same committee, 1841, showed that he
understood the term in a similar sense. Q. 932,
"I mean by the phrase 'currency principles,' a
bank which shall do nothing else but issue
notes for gold, and gold for notes ;" and Q.
933, "I do not at all admit that those are
the correct principles upon which the currency
should be administered.' Mr. T. Tooke, History
of Prices, vol. iv. p. 167, and passim, agrees
with Mr. Gilbart. The controversy was con-
tinued by others, among whom may be cited
Mr. Jones Loyd (Lord Overstone), who, in his
writings and in his evidence before the Select
Committee, H. of C., 1840, and also before the
Select Committee on Bank Acts, H. of C., 1857,
expressed the same opinion, Q. 648, 1857,
"The paper notes or certificates ought to be
preserved at their proper value by making them,
under all circumstances, conform in amount to
the coins or metallic circulation which they
represent." Sir R. Peel employed the same
opinion as the basis of the argument, on which
he founded the reasons for the changes which
he introduced in the banking system of the
country, through the Bank Acts of 1844-45
(see speech in H. of C. on Bank Charter, 6th
May 1844). The principles and the methods
of action which Sir R. Peel supported on that
occasion, were in opposition, as he admitted,
to "the high authority of Adam Smith and
of Ricardo," who held that freedom of com-
petition and immediate convertibility into coin

474

ledge, and they often express the conditions of economic life more accurately as well as more easily than do mathematical symbols."

It may be observed, however, that, as compared with FUNCTIONS (q.v.), curves have a somewhat limited use. They are almost restricted to the simple case of two variables. Thus in the theory of rent, a curve happily represents the returns yielded by successive applications of doses of outlay, as in Jevons's illustration (Theory of Political Economy, ch. vi.) Or, according to a construction which De Quincey appears to have been the first to use, the successive parts of one co-ordinate Ox may represent qualities of land (arranged in a descending order), while the corresponding values of Oy stand for the returns made to equal capitals applied to each portion of land (ep. Prof. Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 483, 2nd ed.) But, when it is attempted to combine these two constructions, as the present writer has done (British Association Report for 1886), the unfamiliar ideas of solids and surfaces are introduced; and clearness is sacrificed. To take another example (the DEMAND CURVES, q.v.) so much extolled by recent economists, are available only on the hypothesis that, while the price of the article under consideration varies, the prices of all other articles remain constant (Auspitz und Lieben Theorie der Preise). But this is a somewhat narrow hypothesis, excluding the important cases of " competing" and "completing" commodities (ibid.), | as we may call those articles which are related either on the one hand, as beef and mutton, or on the other hand, as tea and sugar. such cases a symbolic expression representing the advantage of the consumer as a function of his purchases is much more helpful than a curve. Again, in the theory of distribution the profits of the entrepreneur, depending on the one hand on the sales of finished products, and on the other hand on the expenses of production, wages, interest and rent, and so forth, is better represented by a function of several variables than by a curve. A curve may be best adapted to the Ricardian first approximation that the profits on successive doses of capital are equal. But it is not so easy to represent geometrically the modifications of this conception which a nearer view requiresthat the profits of an entrepreneur are not proportional to the amount of capital employed, that the wages of a labourer are in a certain sense just equal to the product of his labour (Marshall, Principles of Economics, 2nd ed. vol. i. p. 566). Such theories appear to the present writer to flow more naturally from the analytical calculus of maxima and minima than from any use of curves. For further observations as to the use of curves in economics, see FUNCTIONS and MATHEMATICAL METHOD.

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(2) Of the curves obtained by statistical

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F. Y. E.

CUSTODI, PIETRO (1771-1846), born near Novara. He was by profession a lawyer, but soon entered into journalism and directed the paper Amico della libertà Italiana. He became privy councillor and baron. The History of Milan by Pietro Verri was continued by Custodi; as an economist he is widely known as the editor of a collection of the principal Italian economists in fifty volumes. M. P.

CUSTODIA. An expression of Roman law denoting a special duty of taking care of a bailed object (see BAILEE).

E. S. Duties

CUSTOM CUSTOMS DUTIES. charged by law upon commodities imported into or exported from a country. The duties

of customs" seem to have been called customs, as denoting customary payments which had been in use from time immemorial; they appear to have been originally considered as taxes upon the profits of merchants" (Wealth of Nations, bk. v. chap. ii. art. iv.) As early as 1336, however, complaints were made by the producers of wool, at that time the most important dutiable article, that the intended special taxation of merchants was not effected by customs duties, and from 1344, when the price of wool ceased to be fixed by law, such duties were for a long period supported by merchants, and opposed by the agricultural classes. 1490, a "retaliatory" and additional duty imposed on malmsey wine imported from Crete "until the Venetians should abate their new impositions," was the first step in the long series of duties imposed for other than revenue purposes, and eventually mainly for the protection and encouragement of home industries. In

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