(1623) In the beginning, the statute recites that "Your most excellent Majestie in your Royall Judgment ... did In the yeare ... 1610 ... publish in Print to the whole Realme and to all Posteritie, that all Graunt of Monapolyes and of the benefitt of any penall Lawes, or of power to dispence with the Lawe ... are contrary to your Majesties Lawes, which your Majesties Declaracon is truly consonant and agreeable to the auncient and fundamentall Lawes of this your Realme.... Nevertheles ... many such Graunts have bene undulie obteyned ... For avoyding whereof and preventinge of the like in tyme to come, May it please your most excellent Majestic ... that it may be declared and enacted, and be it declared and enacted by the authoritie of this present Parliament That all Monapolies and all Commissions Graunts Licenses Charters and lettres patents heretofore made or graunted, or hereafter to be made or graunted to any person or persons Bodies Politique or Corporate whatsoever of or for the sole buyinge sellinge makinge workinge or usinge of any things within this Realme or the Dominion of Wales, or of any other Monopolies, or of Power Libertie or Facultie to dispence with any others, or to give Licence or Toleracon to doe use or exercise any thinge against the tenor or purport of any Lawe or Statute ... are altogether contrary to the laws of this realm and so are or shall be utterly void and in no wise to be put in use or execution." Section 2 provides that all such monopolies and the force and validity of them ought to be and should forever hereafter be examined, tried, and determined by and according to the common law; section 4, that a party aggrieved might have treble damages, as in our modern Sherman Act. There followed provisos for exempting existing patents for twenty-one years or less for new inventions or like future patents for fourteen years or less, the charters of the city of London, or any custom or customs of London, or any other city or town, for corporations, companies, or fellowships of any art, trade, occupation, or mystery; that is to say, exempting the guilds, but these guilds by this time had long ceased to be societies of actual journeymen or handicraftsmen. This great statute may fairly be classed among the constitutional documents of England, and it left the great fabric of the English common law guaranteeing freedom of labor and liberty of trade, Magna Charta itself recognizing this principle, and the Statute of Westminster I forbidding forestalling and excessive toll contrary to the laws of England, as it has remained until the present day--only rediscovered in the statutes of our Southern and Western States aimed against trusts, and reapplied by Congress, in the Sherman Act, to interstate commerce; but in neither case added to, nor, possibly, improved.