(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 all the profits to the state. Now this is nothing but the "Iowa idea" of two years ago. It was suggested very urgently by Governor Cummins that there should be a law providing that where a trust got complete control of a certain industry in this country its surplus profit should be forfeited either indirectly by the taking off of the tariff, or by way of a franchise tax, that is, of a United States tax upon its franchises, which could be increased in such a way as to tax it out of existence if it persisted. The latter remedy is at the root of President Taft's new corporation tax, but Congress has not yet applied the former, although it was very seriously advocated that there should be statutes which should indirectly forfeit the profits of the trust that had secured a monopoly; that is an engrossing trust--covin or alliance, as our ancestors would have called it--"a gentleman's agreement"--and that it should be done by a reduction of the tariff on the articles in which that trust dealt; this reduction to be ordered by the president. When he determined that a trust had completely engrossed an industry, he might say so by proclamation; and then the act of Congress should go into effect and the duties upon that product be abolished, all the protection of the trust taken away. There is a trouble with such legislation, in that it may be said to allow the president to make the law; and under our Constitution the president cannot make laws. The legislative branch and the executive branch of the government must be kept distinct; and it probably would be argued by constitutional lawyers, and in this instance by either party that was not in favor of such legislation, that to reduce the duties of such a class of goods was a legislative act, and therefore