1285, though the time of this, the Statute concerning Bakers, is put by some still earlier, with the Assize of Bread and Beer, in 1266.  It provides the standard weight and price of bread, ale, and wine, the toll of a mill.  It anticipates our pure-food laws and punishes butchers for selling unwholesome flesh or adulterating oatmeal, and says “that no Forestaller be suffered to dwell in any Town, which is an open Oppressor of Poor People ... which for Greediness of his private Gain doth prevent others in buying Grain, Fish, Herring, or any other Thing to be sold coming by land or Water, oppressing the Poor, and deceiving the Rich, which carrieth away such Things, intending to sell them more dear,... and an whole Town or a Country is deceived by such Craft and Subtilty,” and the punishment is put at a fine at the first offence with the loss of the thing bought, the pillory for the second offence, fine and imprisonment for the third, and the fourth time banishment from the town.

The first definition of forestalling is here given.  Our modern equivalent is the buying of futures or dealing in stocks without intent to deliver, both of which have been forbidden or made criminal in many of our States.  And forestalling, regrating, and engrossing were things early recognized as criminal in England, and these statutes embody much of what is sound in the present legislation against trusts.

Forestalling was very apt to be done in a staple, that is, in the town which was specially devoted to that article of trade; so that the laws of forestalling got very much mixed up with the laws of the staple; but forestalling would equally mean going into any market and buying up all the production.  If the article was produced abroad, the forestaller would try to buy up the entire importation.

(1352) We now find another statute; it applies to wines and liquors “and all other wares that come to the good towns of England,” and the penalty imposed by that law was that the forestaller must forfeit the surplus over cost to the crown and be imprisoned two years.  We are still enforcing remedies of that kind in our anti-trust laws, only instead of having him forfeit the surplus to the crown we usually have him pay damages, sometimes treble damages to the persons injured.  In the Beef Trust case, the parties were duly convicted, and instead of being imprisoned, they were fined $25,000.  In other words, we still have not the courage to go to the length that our ancestors did in enforcing the penalties of these unlawful combinations.  Of course it is a much more difficult thing to have forestalling and engrossing laws against foreign importations than against home productions; and so to-day we have not tried, except by a tariff, forestalling laws against foreign importations, but we have attempted to apply them very much as to home productions.  In England, however, the statute at that time said that a person who bought up all the foreign product must forfeit