[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.

V

OTHER LEGISLATION IN MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND

(1275) The Statute of Westminster I has sometimes been termed a great English code; it is certainly a comprehensive statement by statute of a considerable portion of existing law.  In our consideration of labor and conspiracy laws we have had to include statutes of later centuries.  Now, returning to the year of the Statute of Westminster, we found, in 1275, also the Statute of Bigamy, aimed against priests with more than one wife.  It is to be noted that this was centuries before the celibacy of priests became one of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.  It is also interesting that this early statute refers to the pope as “the Bishop of Rome”—­but only as printed since 1543.

(1279) The Statute of Mortmain, aimed at the holding of land in large quantities by religious corporations, was a true constructive statute, and the principle it establishes has grown ever since.  The law regards with jealousy the ownership of land by any corporation; the presumption is against the power, and it extends to-day to all corporations, and particularly to alien corporations (see chapter 7); and in 1283 came the Statute of Acton Burnel, re-enacted in 1285 and called the “Statute Merchant,” equally important.  It provides for the speedy recovery of debts due merchants, and is the foundation of all our modern law of pledge, sales of collateral, etc.  It is distinctly an innovation on the common law; for in those days there was no method of collecting ordinary money debts.  You could levy on a man’s land, but there really seems to have been no method of recovering a debt contracted in trade; and this is the first of many statutes adopting foreign ideas as to matters of trade, and the customs of merchants, drawn frequently from the Lombard or Jew traders of the Continent, which, by statute law, custom, or court decision, has since become such a considerable body of the English law as to have a name to itself—­the “Law Merchant.”  This first statute provides for imprisonment for debt; “if he have no goods to be seized the debtor is to be imprisoned, but the creditor shall find him bread and water.”  A foreigner coming to England to recover a debt may also recover the expenses of his trip; and the statute is further liberal in that it does away with the Droit d’Aubaine, that narrow-minded custom by which the goods or personal property of any person