(1304) Now let us begin at that first statute of conspiracy, and find what the definition of a conspiracy is; because it is a very important question to-day, whether we are going to stick to the old common-law idea or not.  The very title of this statute is “A definition of conspirators,” and it begins:  “Conspirators be they that do confeder or bind themselves together by oath, covenant or other alliance” either to indict or maintain lawsuits; “and such as retain men in the Countrie with Liveries or Fees for to maintain their malicious Enterprises, and this extends as well to the Takers as to the Givers.”  And as it gradually assumed shape and got definite and broad, the idea, we will say, by 1765, when Blackstone wrote, was this:  A conspiracy is a combination by two or more men, persons or companies, to bring about, either an unlawful result by means lawful or unlawful, or a lawful result by unlawful means. Now so far the definition is admitted.  Everybody agrees, both the labor leaders and the courts, on that definition—­that when two or more people combine together to effect an unlawful object, it is a conspiracy; which is both a criminal offence under the laws of the land everywhere, and also gives the party injured a right to damages, that is, what we call a civil suit; and furthermore no act is necessary.  There is no doubt about that part of the definition.  Or where they combine to get a lawful end by unlawful means, as, for instance, when laborers combine to get their employer to raise their wages by the process of knocking on the head all men that come to take their places, that is gaining a lawful end by unlawful means, by intimidation—­and is a conspiracy.  But now the whole doctrine in discussion comes in:  If you have a combination to bring about by lawful means the injury of a third person in his lawful rights—­not amounting to crime—­is that an unlawful conspiracy?  Yes—­for it is a “malicious enterprise.”  So is our law, and the common law of England, yes.  And you can easily see the common-sense of it.  The danger to any individual is so tremendous if he is to be conspired against by thousands, hundreds of thousands, not by one neighbor, but by all the people of the town, that it early got established as a principle of the common law, and of these early English statutes, that, although one man alone might do an act which, otherwise lawful, was to the injury of a third person, and be neither restrained nor punished for it, he could not combine with others for that purpose by the very same acts.  For instance, I don’t like the butcher with whom I have been doing business; I take away my trade.  That, of course, I have a perfect right to do.  But going a step farther, I tell my friends I don’t like Smith and don’t want to trade with him—­probably I have a right to do that; but when I get every citizen of that town together at a meeting and say:  “Let us all agree to ruin Smith, we will none of us trade