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The blockade-runners drain the country of the little gold which is left in it; the forestallers run up prices, and debase the currency beyond hope; the able-bodied and healthy men who ought to be in the army, swarm in the streets; and the bitter foes of the President poison the public mind, and infuse into it despair.
"Yea, friend," I said, "but in those latter days all power shall be in the hands of these foul swine, and they shall be the rulers of all; therefore, hearken, for I tell thee that times of plenty shall in those days be the times of famine, and all shall pray for the prices of wares to rise, so that the forestallers and regraters may thrive, and that some of their well-doing may overflow on to those on whom they live."
At last the plentiful crops with which it pleased Providence to bless these kingdoms, the prodigious quantities of corn imported from foreign countries, and the wise measures of the legislature, broke all the villanous schemes set on foot by the forestallers and engrossers, and reduced the price of corn to the usual standard.
Then comes the time when the magnet ceases to draw, or the forestallers, having, in their greed, grasped more than they can keep, offer too much for the failing market, and all at once the thing stops, and the dervish-dance ends in coma, in cold forms and still hands, in misery and extinction!"
As it is at present, provision dealers of all kinds, meal-mongers, forestallers, butchers, bakers, and hucksters, combine together, and sustain such a general monopoly in food, as is at variance with the spirit of all law and humanity, and constitutes a kind of artificial famine in the country; and surely; these circumstances ought not to be permitted, so long as we have a deliberative legislature, whose duty it is to watch and guard the health and morals of the people.
The first statute against forestalling merely inflicts a punishment on forestallers and dates ten years later, 1285, though the time of this, the Statute concerning Bakers, is put by some still earlier, with the Assize of Bread and Beer, in 1266. It provides the standard weight and price of bread, ale, and wine, the toll of a mill.
To Reed he wrote in December, 1778: "It gives me sincere pleasure to find that there is likely to be a coalition of the Whigs in your State, a few only excepted, and that the assembly is so well disposed to second your endeavors in bringing those murderers of our cause, the monopolizers, forestallers, and engrossers, to condign punishment.
Gay equipages were seen in the streets; theatres, prosperous even during the Terror, were now filled to overflowing; gambling, whether in money or in stocks and assignats, was now permeating all grades of society; and men who had grown rich by amassing the confiscated State lands now vied with bankers, stock-jobbers, and forestallers of grain in vulgar ostentation.
In those occupations that involved buying and selling the necessities of life, such as those of the fishmongers and the bakers, the officers of the fraternity, like the town authorities, were engaged in a continual struggle with "regrators," "forestallers," and "engrossers," which were appellations as odious as they were common in the mediæval town.
A provident administration it seems had invested the public revenue in its benevolent purchase; the misery was so excessive that even pestilence was anticipated, when the great forestallers came to the rescue of the people over whose destinies they presided; and at the same time fed and pocketed millions. This was the great stroke of the financial genius of Warren. He was satisfied.
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