Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/885

F A I F A I English embassy at St Petersburg, the sum had fallen by one half This was in consequence of the opening of n,ew communications, and the abolition of the Kiatcha monopoly. Turkish Fairs. Of these there are a very considerable number, and the vast bulk of the internal commerce of the country is transacted at them. Among the most note worthy are the fairs of Usundji, in Roumeliu, on a tributary of the Maritza, 40 miles from Adrianople ; Janina in Albania ; Strouga, on the lake of Orida ; Novi-Bazaar in Upper Mcesia ; Islioni in Thrace ; Xicopoli nnd Prelip in Macedonia ; Eski-djouma in Bulgaria ; and Zeitoun and Pharsalia in Thessaly. There is a large show of western manufactures at the Usundji fair. Indian Fairs. The largest of these, and perhaps the largest in Asia, is that of Hurdwar, on the upper course of the Ganges. The visitors to this holy fair number from 200,000 to 300,000 ; but every twelfth year there occurs a special pilgrimage to the sacred river, when the numbers may amount to a million or upwards. Those who go solely for purposes of trade ave Nepaulese, Mongolians, Thibetans, Central Ashtics, and Mahometan pedlars from the Punjab, Scinde, and the border states. Persian shawls and carpets, Indian silks, Cashmere shawls, cottons (Indian and English), preserved fruits, spices, drugs, Arc., together with immense numbers of cattle., horses, sheep, and camels, are brought to this famous fair. American Fairs. The word fair, as now used in the United States, appears to have completely lost its Old "World meaning It seems to be exclusively applied to industrial exhibitions, and to what we in England would call fancy bazaars. Thus, during the civil war, large sums were collected at the " sanitary fairs," for the benefit of the sick and wounded. To the first-named class belong the State and county fairs, as they are called. Among the first and best known of these was the " New York World s Fair," opened in 1853 by a company formed in 1851. Since 1829 the "American Institute " held annual " fairs " for the encouragement of the agricultural and manufacturing arts. The chief centres of these " fairs," or exhibitions, appear to be Cincinnati, Baltimore, Boston, San Francisco, and Buffalo. Law of Fairs. As no market or fair can 1>e hold in England without a royal charter, or right of prescription, so any person establishing a fair without such sanction is liable to be sued, under a writ of Quo ica.rranto, by any one to whose property the said market maybe injurious. Nor can a fair or market b: legally lield beyond the time specified in the grant ; and by 5 Edward 111. c. 5 a mer chant selling goods after the legal expiry of the fair forfeited double their value. To be valid, a sale must take place in " market-overt " (open market) ; "it will not Vie binding if it carries with it a pre sumption of fraud ilence." These regulations satisfied, the sale "transfer.? a complete property in the thing sold to the vendee ; so that however injurious or illegal the title of the vendor mny be, yet the vendee s is good against all men except the king." (In Scotch lav,-, the claims of the real owner would still lemaiu valid.) However, by 21 Henry VIII. e. 2 it was enacted that, " if any felon rob or take away money, goods, or chattels, and be indicted and found guilty, or otherwise attainted upon evidence given by the owner or party robbed, or by any other by their pro curement, the owner or party lobbed shall be lestored to bis money, goods, or chattels," but only those goods were restored whieh were specified in the indictment, nor could the owner recover from a loiinfidc purchaser in market-overt, who had sold the goods befoie conviction. For obvious lea^ons the rules of market overt were made particularly stringent in the case of horses. Thus, by 2 Philip and Mary c. 7 and 31 Eliz. c. 12, no sale of a horse was legal which had not satisfied the following conditions : Public exposure of the animal for at least an hour between sunrise and sunset ; identification of the vendor by the market officer, or guarantee for Ms honesty by "one sufficient and credible person;" entry of these particulars, together with a description of the animal, and a statement of the price paid for it, in the market officer s book. Even if his rights should have been violated in spite of all these precautions, the lawful owner could recover, if he claimed within six months, produced witnesses, and tendered the price paid to the vendor. Tolls were not a "necessary incident " of a fair i.e., they were illegal unless specially granted in the patent, j or lecognized by custom. As a rule, they were paid only by the vendee, and to the market clerk, whose record of the payment was an attestation to the genuineness of the purchase. By 2 and 3 Philip and Mary c. 7 every lord of a fair entitled to exact tolls was bound to appoint a clerk to collect and enter them. It was also this functionary s business to test measures and weights. Tolls, again, are sometimes held to include "stallage" and "picage,"- which mean respectively the price for permission to erect stalls and to dig holes for posts in the, market grounds. But toll proper belongs to the lord of the market, whereas the other two are n sually regarded as the property of the lord of the soil. The law also provided that stallage might be levied on any house situated in the vicinity of a market, and kept open for business during the legal term of the said market. Among recent statutes, one of the chief is the Markets and Fairs Clauses Act (10 Viet. c. 14), the chief purpose of which is to consolidate previous measures. By the Act no proprietors of anew market are permitted to let stallages, take tolls, or in any way open their grounds for business, until two justices of the peace have certified to the completion of the fair or market. After the opening of the place for public use, no person other than a licensed hawker shall sell anywhere within the borough, his own house or shop excepted, any articles in respect of which tolls are legally exigible in the market. A breach of this provision entails a penalty of forty shillings. Vendors of unwhole some meat are liable to a penalty of 5 for each offence; and the "inspectors of provisions" have full liberty to seize the goods and institute proceedings against the owners. They may also enter " at all times of the day, with or without assistance," the slaughter-house which the undertaker of the market may, by the special Act, have been empowered to construct. For general sanitary reasons, persons are prohibited from killing animals anywhere except in these slaughter-houses. Again, by 36 and 37 Viet. c. 37, times of holding fairs are determined by the secretary of state ; while 34 Viet, c. 12 empowers him to abolish any fair on the representation of the magistrate and with the consent of the owner. The preamble of the Act states that many fairs held in England and "Wales are both unnecessary and productive of "grievous immorality." The Fair Courts. The Piepowder Courts, the lowest but most expeditious courts of justice in 1he kingdom, as C hitty calls them, were very ancient. The Conqueror s law De Ewporiis shows their pre-existence in Normandy. Their name was derived from jricd puldreux, Norman for pedlar. 1 The lord of the fair or his repre sentative was the presiding judge, and usually be was assisted by a jury of traders chosen on the spot. Their jurisdiction was limited by the legal time and precincts of the fair, and to disputes about con tracts, "slander of wares," attestations, the preservation of order, &c. Authorities. See Herbert Spencer s Descriptive Sociology, 1S73, especially the columns and paragraphs on "Distribution;" Pies- cott s History of Mexico, for descriptions of fairs under the Aztecs ; Giles Jacob s Law Dictionary, London, 1809; Joseph Chitty d Treatise on the. Law of Commerce, and Manufactures (vol. ii. chap. 9), London, 1824; Holinshed sandGrafton sCflnmtrfe*, forlists, &c., of English fairs; Meyer s Dos Gross? Convocations Lexicon, 1852, under " Messen;" article" Foire" iiiLarousse sDj di oTiwair* Unirer&elledv. XIXc. Slide, Paris, 1866-1874, and its references to past authorities; and especially, the second volume, commercial series, of K Encyclo pedic, Methodiqnc, Paris, 1783; M Culloch s Dictionary of Com merce, 1869-1871 ; Wharton s History of English Poetry, pp. 185. 186, of edition of 1870, London, Murray & Son, for a description of the Winchester Fair, &c.; a note by Professor Henry Morley in p. 498, vol. vii. No(e<i in d Queries, second series ; the same author s ,inK[ue History of the Fair of SI Bartholomew, London, 1859 ; Wharton s Lani Lexicon, Will s edition, London, 1876 ; and also, for some effects of recent legislation, as icgards meat and i at stock markets the debates in the House of Lords Feb. 12 and March 5, 1878. ~ (J- MA.) FAIRBAIRN, SIR WILLIAM, BARONET (1789-1874), a distinguished mechanical engineer, was born at Kelso, Roxburghshire, February 10, 1789. His father, who occupied the humble position of farm bailiff, possessed a large measure of the untiring energy and practical skill which were so conspicuously manifested in the son, but on account of adverse circumstances the family were often re duced to very hard straits ; and as they frequently required to change their place of residence, the education which the children received was somewhat fragmentary. At the age of ten, however, young Fairbairn had " mastered the rules of arithmetic as far as practice and the rule of three," and had acquired a taste for reading by a perusal of the selections from English authors in Scott and Barrow s col- 1 Skene has shown tlie identity in Scotch borough law between " rr.archaml trav?llruid " and "pied puldreux," or "dusty fute."

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