The legislation for giving damages for injuries to property done by mobs was tested after the Pittsburg riots of 1873, and that yellow metropolis was mulcted in heavy damages, which it took twenty-three years to pay off.  But no damages in this country were ever given for criminal homicide directly, although there is an interesting case in the Federal Circuit Court of a gentleman in Georgia who was awaited by a party of neighboring gentlemen with the intention of shooting him up when he arrived.  One of his friends secretly got to the railway station and sent a telegram to his wife, shortly to become his widow, not to come.  The Western Union Telegraph Company delayed the message, its operator being in sympathy with the gentlemen of the neighboring town, and the widow failed to recover damages from the telegraph company.  But these modern statutes in Ohio and the Southern States, making towns responsible in a definite sum to the kin of a murdered man, are the exact re-enactment of the early Anglo-Saxon law; except that the blood damages—­the were gild—­were in those days put upon the neighbors or the kin of the enemy.

“Organized labor” is hostile to the use of the militia, still more of the regular army, in any labor dispute or riot resulting therefrom.  It is never justifiably hostile where actual offences are committed, but there is something to be said, at least there is some precedent for their hostility, in cases where by the accident of Federal jurisdiction the whole power of the United States army is called in to back up the injunction of a judge, perhaps improperly issued.  That is to say, if the parties to the dispute are citizens of the same State the National government may not interfere except, of course, where the mails or inter-State commerce are obstructed; but, by the mere accident that plaintiff and defendant come from different States—­and this may nearly always be made the case by the plaintiff corporation, if it be a citizen of another State than where it owns its mine or operates its mill—­it may always pick out strike leaders, walking delegates, who are citizens of another State, so that the litigation may be brought in a United States court.  If, then, the orders or processes of that Federal court be interfered with, under the law of our Constitution the entire Federal government, first the Federal marshals and then the Federal army, may be called into the fight.

CHAPTER XIV

OF POLITICAL RIGHTS

Most important of these are the right to assemble, and the right of free election.  The right of political assembly and petition is another principle which has been much broadened by American constitutions.  In England the right of public meeting undoubtedly existed from early times, but it was tied to the right of petitioning Parliament, which obviously limited its scope; and always strongly contested by the kings.  Many riot acts were passed, both by the Tudors and