States.  “Regrating” is defined in some of the early dictionaries as speculating in provisions; the offence of buying provisions at a market for the purpose of reselling them within four miles of the place.  The careful regulation of markets and market towns that existed in early times in England would not suffer some rich capitalist to go in and buy all that was offered for sale with intent of selling it to the same neighborhood at a higher price.  Bishop Hatto of the Rhine, you may remember, paid with his life for this offence.  The prejudice against this sort of thing has by no means ended to-day.  We have legislation against speculation in theatre tickets, as well as in cotton or grain.  “Engrossing” is really the result of a successful forestalling, with or without regrating; that is to say, it is a complete “corner of the market”; from it our word “grocer” is derived.  Such corners, if completely successful, would have the public at their mercy; luckily they rarely are; the difficulty, in fact, begins when you begin to regrate.  But in artificial commodities it is easier; so in the Northern Pacific corner, a nearly perfect engrossing; the shares of stock went to a thousand dollars, and might have gone higher but for the voluntary interference of great financiers.  Leiter’s Chicago corner in wheat, Sully’s corner in cotton, were almost perfect examples of engrossing, but failed when the regrating began.  All these tend to monopoly, and act, of course, in restraint of trade; the broader meanings of these two latter more important principles we leave for later discussion.

(1285) The Statute of Bakers, or Assize of Bread and Ale, is by some assigned to the 13th of Edward I. If so, we find all these great modern questions treated by statute in the reign of the same great law-making king, Edward I, who well was called the “English Justinian”; for, in 1305, twenty years later, we have the first Statute of Conspiracy.  This statute only applies to the maintaining of lawsuits; but the Statute of Laborers of 1360 declares void all alliances and covins between masons, carpenters, and guilds, chapters and ordinances; and from this time on the statutes recognize the English common law of conspiracy in general words.

As this is one of the most important doctrines of the English law, and moreover one which is most criticised to-day by large interests, both of capital and labor, it will be wise to dwell upon its historical and logical origin in this place, though we shall consider it at length later as it touches various fields of legislation.  It is notable for two most important principles:  first, that it recognizes the great menace of combined action, and both forbids and punishes combinations to do an act which might be lawful for the individual; second, of all branches of civil, as distinct from criminal, law, it is the one which most largely recognizes intent; that is to say, the ethical purposes of the combination.  It has been urged in some judicial