life and regulation of inter-municipal commerce, and introduced marked contrasts to the conditions of business in ancient cities.  The Christian appreciation of the duty of work rendered the lot of the mediaeval villain a very different thing from that of the slave of the ancient empire.  The responsibility of proprietors, like the responsibility of prices, was so far insisted on as to place substantial checks on tyranny of every kind.  For these principles were not mere pious opinions, but effective maxims in practical life.  Owing to the circumstances in which the vestiges of Roman civilisation were locally maintained, and the foundations of the new society were laid, there was ample opportunity for Christian teaching and example to have a marked influence on its development.’[5] In Dr. Cunningham’s book entitled Politics and Economics the same opinion is expressed:[6] ’Religious and industrial life were closely interconnected, and there were countless points at which the principles of divine law must have been brought to bear on the transaction of business, altogether apart from any formal tribunal.  Nor must we forget the opportunities which directors had for influencing the conduct of penitents....  Partly through the operation of the royal power, partly through the decisions of ecclesiastical authorities, but more generally through the influence of a Christian public opinion which had been gradually created, the whole industrial organism took its shape, and the acknowledged economic principles were framed.’  We have quoted these passages from Dr. Cunningham’s works at length because they are of great value in helping us to estimate the rival parts played by theory and practice in mediaeval economic teaching; in the first place, because the author was by no means prepossessed in favour of the teaching of the canonists, but rather unsympathetic to it; in the second place, because, although his work was concerned primarily with practice, he found himself obliged to make a study of theory before he could properly understand the practice; and lastly, because they point particularly to the effect of the teaching on just price.  When we come to speak of this part of the subject we shall find that Dr. Cunningham failed to appreciate the true significance of the canonist doctrine.  If an eminent author, who does not quite appreciate the full import of this doctrine, and who is to some extent contemptuous of its practical value, nevertheless asserts that it exercised an all-powerful influence on the practice of the age in which it was preached, we are surely justified in asserting that the study of theory may be profitably pursued without a preliminary history of the contemporary practice.

[Footnote 1:  Even Endemann warns his readers against assuming that the canonist teaching had no influence on everyday life. (Studien, vol. ii. p. 404.)]

[Footnote 2:  Ashley, op. cit., vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 383-85.  Again:  ‘The later canonist dialectic was the midwife of modern economics’ (ibid., p. 397).]