Of these two types of towns, the one sufficient to themselves, the other living upon the outside world, it is unquestionably the first to which the theory of the urban economy applies. Direct trade between purchaser and consumer, strict protectionism excluding the foreigner from the local market and reserving it to the bourgeoisie alone, minute regulations confining within narrow limits the industry of the merchant and the artisan; in a word, all the traits of an organization evidently designed to preserve and safeguard the various members of the community by assigning to each his place and his rôle, are all found and all explained without difficulty in those towns which are confined to a clientage limited by the extent of their suburban dependencies. In these one can rightly speak of an anti-capitalistic economy. In these we find neither great _entrepreneurs_ nor great merchants. It is true that the necessity of stocking the town with commodities which it does not produce or cannot find in its environs--groceries, fine cloths, wines in northern countries--brings into existence a group of exporters whose condition is superior to that of their fellow-citizens. But on inspection they cannot be regarded as a class of great professional merchants. If they buy at wholesale in foreign markets, it is to sell at retail to their fellow-citizens. They dispose of their goods piecemeal, and like the _Gewandschneider_ of the German towns, they do not rise above the level of large shopkeepers.[17]
In the towns of the second category we find a quite different condition. Here capitalism not only exists but develops toward perfection. Instruments of credit, such as the _lettre de foire,_ make their appearance; a traffic in money takes its place alongside the traffic in merchandise and, despite the prohibition of loans at interest, makes constantly more rapid progress. The _coutumes_ of the fairs, especially those of the fairs of the Champagne, in which the merchants of the regions most advanced in an economic sense, Italy and the Low Countries, meet each other, give rise to a veritable commercial law. The circulation of money expands and becomes regulated; the coinage of gold, abandoned since the Merovingian period, is resumed in the middle of the thirteenth century. The security of travellers increases on the great highways. The old Roman bridges are rebuilt and here and there canals are built and dykes constructed. Finally, in the towns, the commercial buildings of the previous period, outgrown, are replaced by structures more vast and more luxurious, of which the _halles_ of Ypres, with their façade one hundred and thirty-three metres long, is doubtless the most imposing specimen.