s, or fellowships of
any art, trade, occupation, or mystery; that is to say, exempting the
guilds, but these guilds by this time had long ceased to be societies
of actual journeymen or handicraftsmen. This great statute may fairly
be classed among the constitutional documents of England, and it left
the great fabric of the English common law guaranteeing freedom of
labor and liberty of trade, Magna Charta itself recognizing this
principle, and the Statute of Westminster I forbidding forestalling
and excessive toll contrary to the laws of England, as it has remained
until the present day--only rediscovered in the statutes of our
Southern and Western States aimed against trusts, and reapplied by
Congress, in the Sherman Act, to interstate commerce; but in neither
case added to, nor, possibly, improved.

Two years before this great statute, the process of impeachment, not
employed for nearly two hundred years, had been revived against Sir
Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell, who in the Parliament of
1621 were impeached "for fraud and oppression committed as patentees
for the exclusive manufacture of gold and silver thread, for
the inspection of inns and hostelries, and for the licensing of
ale-houses. While no definite articles were presented according to
modern forms, an accusation was made by the Commons and a judgment
rendered by the Lords, condemning both to fine, imprisonment, and
degradation from the honor of knighthood." Nevertheless, Charles
I revived the system of monopolies and raised revenue by their
application to almost every article of ordinary consumption as well as
by enormous fines inflicted through the Star Chamber, both important
matters leading to his dethronement.[1] Elizabeth granted monopolies
on the perfectly madern pretence that a monopoly, be it made by law or
by tariff, is for the benefit of the public good, though at the same
time possibly a private profit to certain individuals, friends of the
sovereign.

[Footnote 1: See Dowell, "History of Taxation," vol. I, pp. 204-209.]

But all this early legislation of England was far better and more
advanced than our own; for in all these questions of duties on exports
and duties on imports and monopolies, they never consider the man who
has the monopoly, the producer; but always they are avowed to
be, petitioned for, declared to be, only in the interests of the
_consumer_; which cannot be said to be the case with ourselves.

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