richly carved and painted woodwork in Mauresque style. The walls are tiled to a height of 4 or 5 ft., and above they are finished in plaster, whitewashed or carved into filigree work. The population numbers being between thirty and forty thousand. Idrisi, writing in A.D. 1100, calls the place Takarart, and describes it as an ordinary citadel, from which the town gradually developed, taking its name from the Miknasa Berbers.
MERAN, the chief town of the administrative district of the
same name in the Austrian province of the Tirol, 20 m. by rail
N.W. of Botzen on the Brenner line, while the Vintschgau railway
connects it with Mals, 37 m. N.W. It is the chief town in the
upper Adige valley, a region which bears the special name of the
Vintschgau, and is on the high road either to Landeck and the
Lower Engadine by the Reschen Scheideck Pass (4902 ft.), or
more directly to the Lower Engadine by the Munster valley and
the Ofen Pass (7071 ft.). In 1900 Meran had 9284 inhabitants
(or, with the neighbouring villages of Untermais and Obermais,
13,201), mainly German-speaking and Romanist. The town is
picturesquely situated, at a height of 1001 ft., at the foot of the
vine-clad Küchelberg, and on the right bank of the Passer River,
just above its junction with the Adige or Etsch. Meran proper
consists mainly of one long narrow street, the Laubengasse,
flanked by covered arcades, but the name is often used to include
several adjacent villages, Untermais and Obermais being on the
left bank of the Passer, while Gratsch is on its right bank and
north-west of the main town. The most noteworthy buildings are
the parish church (14th to 15th centuries) and the old residence
(15th century) of the counts of the Tirol. Meran is best known
as a much-frequented resort for consumptive patients, for whom
it is well suited by reason of the purity of the air and the comparative
immunity of the place from wind and rain in the winter. It
is also visited in spring for the whey cure and in autumn for the
grape cure.
To the north-west, on the Küchelberg, is the half-ruined castle of Tirol (2096 ft.), the original seat of the family which gave its name to the county. Meran may have been built on the site of a Roman settlement, but is first mentioned in 857. From the 12th century to about 1420 it was the capital of the ever-extending land named after it Tirol, but then had to give way to Innsbruck, while the building of the Brenner railway (1864–1867) and the rise of Botzen have decreased its commercial importance. (W. A. B. C.)
MERBECK (or Marbeck), JOHN (d. c. 1585), English theological
writer and musician, was organist of St George’s, Windsor,
about 1540. Four years later he was convicted of heresy and
sentenced to the stake, but received a pardon owing to the
intervention of Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, though Gardiner
had himself censured Merbeck for compiling an English Concordance
of the Bible. This work, the first of its kind in English,
was published in 1550 with a dedication to Edward VI. In the
same year Merbeck published his annotated Book of Common
Prayer, intended to provide for musical uniformity in the use of
the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., which was several times
reprinted in the 19th century. Merbeck wrote several devotional
and controversial works of a strongly Calvinistic character,
and a number of his musical compositions are preserved in manuscript
in the British Museum, and at Oxford and Cambridge. He
died, probably while still organist at Windsor, about 1585, His
son, Roger Merbeck (1536–1605), a noted classical scholar, was
appointed public orator in the university of Oxford in 1564, and
in 1565 became a canon of Christ Church and was elected provost
of Oriel; he left Oxford on account of an unfortunate marriage,
and took to medicine as a profession, becoming the first registrar
of the College of Physicians in London, and chief physician to
Queen Elizabeth.
MERCADIER (d. 1200), French warrior of the 12th century,
and chief of freebooters in the service of Richard I. of England.
In 1183 he operated for Richard, then duke of Aquitaine, in the
Limousin and the Angoumois, taking castles and laying waste
the country. We know nothing of him during the ten years
1184–1194, but after Richard’s return from Palestine, Mercadier
accompanied him everywhere, travelling and fighting by his
side. Richard eulogized Mercadier’s exploits in his letters, and
gave him the estates left by Adémar de Bainac, who died without
heirs about 1190. During the various wars between Richard
and Philip Augustus of France, Mercadier fought successively
in Berry, Normandy, Flanders and Brittany. When Richard
was mortally wounded at the siege of Châlus in March 1199,
Mercadier avenged him by hanging the defenders of the château
and flaying the crossbowman who had shot the king. Mercadier
then entered the service of John, and ravaged Gascony. On
Easter Monday, the 10th of April 1200, he was assassinated while
on a visit to Bordeaux to pay his respects to Eleanor of Aquitaine,
who was bringing from Spain Blanche of Castile. His murderer
was an agent of Brandin, another freebooter in the service of John.
See Geraud, Mercadier, in Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 1st series, t. iii., pp. 417–443.
MERCANTILE (or Commercial) AGENCIES, the name given in America to organizations designed to collect, record and distribute to regular clients information relative to the standing of commercial firms. In Great Britain and some European countries trade protective societies, composed of merchants and tradesmen, are formed for the promotion of trade, and members exchange information regarding the standing of business houses. These societies had their origin in the associations formed in the middle of the 19th century for the purpose of disseminating information regarding bankruptcies, assignments and bills of sale. The mercantile agency in the United States is a much more comprehensive organization. It came into existence after the financial crisis of 1837. Trade in the United States had become scattered over a wide territory. Communication was slow, and the town merchant was without adequate information as to the standing of many business men seeking credit. Undoubtedly the severity of the collapse of 1837 was due in part to the insufficiency of this information. New York merchants, who had suffered so severely, determined to organize a headquarters where reports regarding the standing of customers could be exchanged. Lewis Tappan (1788–1873), founder of the Journal of Commerce (1828) and a prominent anti-slavery leader, undertook the work, and established in New York, in 1841, the Mercantile Agency, the first organization of its kind. The system has been wonderfully developed and extended since.
MERCANTILE SYSTEM, the name given to the economic
policy which developed in Europe at the close of the middle ages.
The doctrine of the mercantile system, stated in its most extreme
form, made wealth and money identical, and regarded it therefore
as the great object of a community so to conduct its dealings
with other nations as to attract to itself the largest possible share
of the precious metals. Each country’s interest was to export
the utmost possible quantity of its own manufactures and to
import as little as possible of those of other countries, receiving
the difference of the two values in gold and silver. This difference
is called the balance of trade, and the balance is favourable
when more money is received than is paid. Governments might
resort to all available expedients—prohibition of, or high duties
on, the importation of foreign wares, bounties on the export of
home manufactures, restrictions on the export of the precious
metals—for the purpose of securing such a balance.
But this statement of the doctrine, though current in textbooks, does not represent correctly the views of all who belonged to the mercantile school. Many members of that school were much too clear-sighted to entertain the belief that wealth consists exclusively of gold and silver. The mercantilists may be best described, as W. G. F. Roscher remarked, not by any definite economic theorem which they held in common, but by a set of theoretic tendencies, commonly found in combination, though severely prevailing in different degrees in different minds. The underlying principles may be enumerated as follows: (1) the importance of possessing a large amount of the precious metals; (2) an exaltation (a) of foreign trade over domestic, and (b) of the industry which works up materials over that which provides them; (3) the value of a dense population as an element of national strength; and (4) the employment of state action in furthering artificially the attainment of the ends proposed.
