d constitutions, as well as most State courts, recognize
that the common-law statutes of England existing at least before 1775,
if not 1620,[1] are common law in the States of this Union. In a
general way, any statute that antedates the time of our settlement we
took over as part of our common law.

[Footnote 1: 1607 (Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana,
Missouri, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming); 1776 (Florida, Maryland, Rhode
Island, Pennsylvania). None, however, are law in New York.]

We are now coming also to that great range of statutes, which, on the
one hand, control labor and regulate the rights of the laborer, both
in his prices and in his hours; and, on the other, those statutes
relating to what we call "trusts," conspiracy, and trades-unions,
which have made common-law principles which are to-day, all of them,
invoked by our courts; and form the precedents of practically all
our modern legislation on matters affecting labor, labor disputes,
injunctions, strikes, boycotts, blacklists, restraint of trade, and
trusts--in fact, the largest field of discussion now before the mind
of the American people. The subjects are more or less connected. That
is, you have the growth of legislation as to laborers on the one
hand, and on the other you have the growth of this legislation as to
combinations or conspiracies, trades-unions, guilds, etc.

(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 effe