ABSTRACT
Americans who complain of the oppressiveness of the Trusts will be astonished at the number of commodities that had been monopolised in the reign of Elizabeth. Monopolies of transport had been added to monopolies of sale and production. In some places the price of salt was raised from sixteen pence to fourteen or fifteen shillings a bushel; and almost every species of foreign commerce is said to have been confined to individuals or exclusive companies before the House of Commons had the courage to introduce a Bill for the abolition of monopolies. Parliament and the courts succeeded before the end of the seventeenth century in destroying the monopolies which the Crown in the sixteenth century had been in the habit of granting to individuals, leaving only the law of patents which confers rewards upon invention. The monopoly towards which the liquor traffic has been progressing so rapidly is of a local rather than a national character.
