which brought men together; it was war which taught men the necessity of order, discipline, and obedience; without the necessity for fighting, without the military spirit, no association at all would now be possible.  A vast number of men practically use modern safety at this day for the purpose of being fighters, every man against his neighbour.  Just as no one would, even now, do any work but for the necessity of finding food for himself and his family, so no one would ever have begun to stand side by side with his neighbour but for the absolute certainty that he would be killed if he did not.

Let us, however, consider a more advanced kind of association, that of men united for purposes of trade and profit.  The craftsman of the town, who made things and sold them, found out by the experience of some generations that his only chance, if he would not become a slave, was to combine with others who made the same things for the same purposes.  He therefore formed—­here in London, as early as the Saxon times an association for the protection of his craft—­a rough-and-ready association at first, a religious guild or fraternity, something which should persuade men to come together as friends, not rivals, what we should now call a benefit society, gradually developing into an association of officers, a constitution, and rules; growing by slow degrees into a powerful and wealthy body, having its period of birth, development, vigour, and decay.  In illustration of such an association, I will sketch out for you the history of a certain London Company—­what was called a Craft Company; a society of working-men who were engaged upon the same craft; who all made the same thing:  as the Company of Bowyers who made bows, or of Fletchers who made arrows.  The society began first of all with a Guild of the Craft, such as I have just mentioned; that is to say, all those who belonged to the Craft—­according to the custom of the time, they all lived in the same quarter and were well known to each other—­were persuaded or compelled to belong to the Guild.  Here religion stepped in, for every Guild had its own patron saint, and if a craftsman stood aloof, he lost the protection and incurred the displeasure of that saint, so that, apart from considerations of the common weal, terror of how the offended saint might punish the blackleg forced men to join.  Thus, St. George protected the armourers; St. Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr, the bowyers; St. Catharine the Virgin, the haberdashers; St. Martin, the sadlers; the Virgin Mary, the cloth-workers, and so on.  On the saint’s day they marched in procession to the parish church and heard Mass; every year each man paid his fees of membership; the Guild looked after the sick and maintained the aged of the Craft.  The next step, which was not taken until after many years, and was not at first contemplated, was to obtain for the Guild—­i.e., for the Craft—­a Royal Charter.  This favour of the Sovereign conferred