h the matter
of the conspiracy. They might, of course, be tried for assault and
battery, or for an attempt to commit murder; but if they are being
tried for the _conspiracy_ the criminal act is the combining and
meeting, not what they do afterward. Therefore it is of no importance
whatever what the result of the matter is. The thing that is criminal
is the combining; and this leads to a very curious consequence:
All conspiracies are criminal; but the object aimed at may be very
slightly so. So that it is perfectly possible to have a conspiracy
which shall result to its members in five or ten years in the
state-prison, whereas the object itself, the act aimed at, may have
been comparatively slight, a mere misdemeanor. Take the case of mere
intimidation without assault or battery; one man goes to another
and says: "If you take that work I shall smash your head," that is
intimidation. Thirty of our States have made that unlawful, but it is
only a misdemeanor. But if one thousand men get together and say:
"We will go around to tell him we will smash his head," that is
conspiracy; and conspiracy may subject them to penalty of years in
prison. It has been found in the experience of the English people to
be such a dangerous power, this power of combination, that to use it
for an unlawful or wrongful end may be more of an offence than the end
itself.

A combination to injure a man's trade is, therefore, an unlawful
conspiracy; well shown in a recent Ohio case where a combination of
several persons to draw their money out of a bank simultaneously for
the purpose of making it fail, was held criminal. It gives a claim
for damages in a civil suit and may be enjoined against. But is it
necessarily criminal? It is possible that the offence to the public is
so slight that the criminal courts would hardly take cognizance of it
in minor cases where there is not some statute expressly providing for
a criminal remedy. The Sherman Act, our Anti-trust Act, does so where
even two persons conspire together to restrain interstate commerce. It
is a crime at common law, however slight, for even two to combine to
injure any person's trade. But, independent of statutes, suppose only
two persons agree not to buy of a certain butcher in Cambridge: in
theory, he might have a civil remedy; but it may be doubted that it
would amount to a criminal offence. _Lex non curat de minimis_. So,
it is an offence under most State anti-trust laws, as it was at t