PURSUIT OF ALBION^245
order. Besides, the rising commercial and industrial bourgeoisie was in
no mood to return to the Middle Ages.
The dam broke first in relatively backward Austria. The Ministry of
Commerce put it blundy: "... for Austrian industry, which since the
fall of the prohibitive system has to struggle in all directions against for
eign competition, the grant of complete freedom of movement is no
longer a question of mere improvement and greater well-being, but a
necessary condition of its ability to compete."^17 If the government still
had doubts about the matter, the military defeats in northern Italy
drove home the need for reform. War, especially unsuccessful war, con
centrates the mind. On 20 December 1859 an imperial patent estab
lished freedom of enterprise throughout the Habsburg dominions.
The move was contagious. The system of corporate industrial control
began collapsing throughout the Germanies. By 1870 and unification,
the batde was over.^18
Boundaries and BarriersA third major medieval legacy in restraint of trade was the extraor
dinarily complex array of interferences with transport and travel: river
and port tolls; road fees; entrance duties at city gates ("Oxen and Jews:
4 Pfennig"); customs barriers following one upon the other because of
the lacework of political boundaries, including enclaves and exclaves;
a multiplicity of exemptions and franchises, honored as much in the
breach as in the observance.
Most of the road and river tolls went back to times of political weak
ness and general insecurity when higher political authority could not
prevent robber barons and local jurisdictions from levying on passersby.
Once there, only try to remove: the one thing everyone respected was
vested interest, because everyone had one, or wanted to have one.
Even where higher authority ruled and permission was needed to levy,
the right to charge was seen, not as a fee for service or facilities, but as
one more source of income, hence a mark of favor to be solicited or
bought. We have the story of this Count of the Palatinate, impecunious
and importuning, who in 1579 pulled out all the stops in his petition
for toll-right: "God have mercy and help us and our six poor unedu
cated children and our wife with heavy belly full with child."^19
These tolls, then, did not pay for improvements and maintenance,
but were simply extortion; and so well did they return, especially on
water routes, that haulers were often compelled to use roads, however
poor and slow, even for bulk commodities of low value per weight.