tant questions, that the peaceable assemblage of miners in the vicinity of the coal mines, in the hope of inducing their fellow-laborers to engage in a common cause for the pro motion of their own interests, was not such a nuisance as to bring them within the juris diction of a court of equity, or to warrant the issuing of its process to restrain them from making use of the public highways in the promotion of their cause. We come, then, to the question of trespass, and upon this point the courts have been equally clear. They demand not only that a trespass shall be shown, but that it shall be of such a permanent nature, entailing actual irremediable damages, that the de fendant may not be able to compensate for the loss. The mere encampment of a peace able body of miners upon the surface of the ground owned or controlled by a corporation engaged in the mining of coal, while con stituting a trespass, is not such a trespass as to justify a court of equity in issuing an in junction to restrain them from this action, because it cannot be shown that it is a direct injury to the property of the company —
any resulting damage is contingent, and not within the jurisdiction of the court under any fair construction of its powers, as under stood and exercised for centuries. Therefore, while there can be no doubt as to the right of the court to issue an injunc tion, and to enforce it with the military power, restraining persons from interfering with the transportation of goods over the interstate highways, the loss or delay of which would result in irreparable damage to people in all parts of the country, or to the corporations engaged in such transportation, this action ought not to be allowed to be come a precedent for interference for no other purpose than to prevent the possible commission of crimes. Crime is not within the jurisdiction of equity; it belongs ex clusively to the law, and it is the high duty of good citizenship to demand that our courts shall be preserved in all of their oldtime integrity, and that they shall not be prostituted to the service of selfish interests in the suppression of honest, if misdirected, efforts to ameliorate the condition of the human race.
A LEGAL RELIC. BY MELVIN M. JOHNSON. THE seal is perhaps the greatest relic of all our legal treasures of to-day. Its archetype must date with the first form ation of society, more ancient than the prophets and the judges, more honorable than the oath and affirmation or any other custom which we practice and revere to day. It appears concomitant with the first business transactions of mankind. Our first great book of precedents records that Judah, more than thirty-seven centuries ago, con stantly carried his signet with him. (Gen. xxxviii, 18.) And it was an ordinary oc currence for Moses to affix his seal to doc
uments. (Dent, xxxii, 34.) And when the whole Israelitish nation desired to bind itself in the most solemn manner, its officers executed a deed, saying, " And be cause of all this we make a sure covenant and write it; and our princes, Lévites, and priests seal unto it." (Neh. ix, 38.) In re Jeremiah approaches the nearest to modern methods of any recorded ancient transaction. For Jeremiah bought Hanameel's field, and the evidences were sub scribed and sealed in the presence of wit nesses. (Jeremiah xxxii, 10.) That this was the usual form of conveyancing in his
