[Footnote 1:  Hunter, Roman Law, p. 492.]

[Footnote 2:  Ashley, op. cit., p. 133.]

[Footnote 3:  ’Scio ipse hominem quum venalis codex ei fuisset oblatus, pretiique ejus ignarum ideo quiddam exiguum poscentem cerneret venditorem, justum pretium, quod multo amplius erat nec opinanti dedisse’ (De Trin., xiii. 3).]

[Footnote 4:  Palgrave, Dictionary of Political Economy, tit.  ’Justum Pretium.’]

Sec. 2. The Just Price when Price fixed by Law.

Regarding the power of the State to fix prices, the theologians and jurists were in complete agreement.  According to Gerson:  ’The law may justly fix the price of things which are sold, both movable and immovable, in the nature of rents and not in the nature of rents, and feudal and non-feudal, below which price the seller must not give, or above which the buyer must not demand, however they may desire to do so.  As therefore the price is a kind of measure of the equality to be observed in contracts, and as it is sometimes difficult to find that measure with exactitude, on account of the varied and corrupt desires of man, it becomes expedient that the medium should be fixed according to the judgment of some wise man....  In the civil state, however, nobody is to be decreed wiser than the lawgiving authority.  Therefore it behoves the latter, whenever it is possible to do so, to fix the just price, which may not be exceeded by private consent, and which must be enforced.’...[1] Biel practically paraphrases this passage of Gerson, and contends that it is the duty of the prince to fix prices, mainly on account of the difficulty which private contractors find in doing so.[2]

[Footnote 1:  De Cont., i. 19.]

[Footnote 2:  Op. cit., IV. xv. 11.]

The rules which we find laid down for the guidance of the prince in fixing prices are very interesting, as they show that the mediaeval writers had a clear idea of the constituent elements of value.  Langenstein, whose famous work on contracts was considered of high authority by later writers, says that the prince should take account of the condition of the place for which the price was to be fixed, the circumstances of the time, the condition of the mass of the people.  The different kinds of need which may be felt for goods must also be considered, indigentice naturae, status, voluptatis, and cupiditatis; and a distinction drawn between extensive and intensive need—­the former is greater ‘quanto plures re aliqua indigent,’ the latter ‘quanto minus de illa re habetur.’  The general rule is that the prince must seek to find a medium between a price so low as to render labourers, artisans, and merchants unable to maintain themselves suitably, and one so high as to disable the poor from obtaining the necessaries of life.  When in doubt, Langenstein concludes, the price should err on the low rather than the high side.[1] Biel gives similar rules: