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THE GREEN BAG
Wales had been confiscated, to satisfy the anger of the king and the cupidity of the courtiers. It is said that twelve million acres in all were thus seized, constituting the former endowment of six hundred and forty-five monasteries, ninety colleges, and one hundred and ten hospitals, an array which indicated the strength of the Church in former times, when it was reenforced by popular sympathy and support. Not satisfied with wholesale confiscations which left the Church humiliated and pros trated, and disparaged at home and abroad, laws were enacted to prevent the return of the sequestered estates to churchly hands. Not only were the older provisions relating to "mortmain" strengthened and enforced, but in 23 Henry VIII, Ch. 10, it was declared that all future grants of land (to uses), if granted for any longer term than twenty years, should be void. Some blazing up of the embers there was at occasional intervals, but the power of the Church to oppose was largely spent. The munificent gifts with which the pious fervor of the faithful had equally displayed itself in endowments at home and in the Crusades abroad, could no longer be expected in a cooler and more material age. The inmates of the vast institutions which had provided always generously, often profusely, for all who asked in God's name, were beggared, and cast abroad into a practical and unsympathetic world. The very acres which were once tilled by the monks or by their tenants, for the Church's benefit, now poured their stream of rentals into the laps of adversaries, and these re sources were at command to protect the title of the usurper. The Church had defied the State, but the combination of a doting monarch and the wave of religious unrest culminating in the Reformation, had brought about a deadly "trial by combat," and the State had won. It is true that under Philip and Mary, the enforcement of the mortmain statutes was suspended, and under the mild reign of
Edward VI, there were conscientious wav erings on the part of the Crown, in main taining the aggressive position assumed in the time of "Bluff King Hal." These things, though time was all the while making the rights of the occupants of Church lands more adverse and secure, afforded the ecclesiastics some signs of re lief; but with the coronation of Elizabeth, Protestant daughter of a Protestant queen, the last glimmer expired, and the mediaeval struggle — that grappling of titans to win a moiety of the " Garden Isle" — was near its close. It is true that some final acts remained to effectuate the completeness of the over throw. In the time of George II, in 1736, the last of these laws, the Mortmain Act, was written on the statute books; but it was an act of supererogation. It was "killing the already dead." The pride and power of churchly possessions had fled, and these final acts were but inscribing the mortuary lines. The State is supreme! Happily for us in America, no part of this struggle has been felt on these shores. The laws of mortmain were and are contained in the law as handed down to us from Colo nial times (2 Kent's Com., 272), but while we share in the benefits, the contest itself was a part of an earlier era than ours. PART II — MODERN MONOPOLY Modern monopoly is not merely a phrase; it is a situation. He can but poorly read the sign of the times, who does not recog nize in the continual uniting of interests, an era of combination which must, humanly speaking, have only one termination — monopoly. Let us pause for a moment to scan the field about us, and see the transition as it is progressing before our eyes. Perhaps the most tangible object lesson is the United States Steel Corporation.
