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basty conclusion that they have in these matters arbitrarily assumed an authority which does not belong to them, and through sheer love of power and desire to favor the rich have conspired to oppress the people, is widespread enough to constitute a grave danger to our institutions. These sentiments have been fostered, through the press and otherwise, by many men of many minds; some carried away by the natural sympathy excited by the distressed condition of many laboring men, and assuming that the courts have unconscionably allied themselves together to further oppress the oppressed; some doubtless influenced by no higher motive than the desire to gain votes for their own political party and to score a point against their political opponents; some, assuming the usurpation which they have heard so often charged, have joined in the clamor on general principles, as it were; others, sincerely convinced of the illegal and inequitable character of the acts complained of, join in opposing what they conceive to be a very dangerous attack on the liberties of the people.

It is astonishing to read in reputable newspapers such attacks on the courts and judges as have appeared in some of them during the last few months; in unreasoning and unreasonable violence they have put to blush the veriest anarchist of them all.

It would well become us then to investigate carefully and impartially the origin and growth of that jurisdiction, the exercise of which in certain instances has given rise to the feeling of which we have spoken; the particular application of that jurisdiction to labor troubles; the proceedings for the punishment of contempts; the dangers threatened thereby; and the means whereby those dangers may be best and most honorably averted; time forbids, however, anything but a cursory examination of these very important and interesting questions.

While it has been a maxim even from the earliest times that the equitable jurisdiction of chancery extended only to such matters as were not remediable by law, yet for many years after this already permissive jurisdiction was perma

nently establisbed by Edward III, there was the greatest latitude in determining its extent, and the chancellors seem to have been governed largely by their own consciences, their own ideas of right and justice, than by the fixed rules or well defined regulations. As a result of the enlargement of the jurisdiction of equity we find from the reign of Richard II through that of Henry VI, numerous petitions from the House of Commons to the king protesting against the chancellor's deciding upon matters which were remediable at common law. It is unnecessary here, however interesting it might be, to trace the gradual delimination of the jurisdiction of the courts of equity, and the processes by which their latitude was restricted. Lord Nottingham in 1676 laid down the rule that a chancellor was to be governed by a legal conscience (civilis et politica) rather than by a personal conscience (naturalis et interna), and even before his time the multitude of precedents already collected had resulted in certain defined rules by which the courts of equity were guided. The principle which governs equity jurisprudence as finally settled, is thus stated by Mr. Adams: "It does not create rights which the common law denies, but it gives effectual redress for the infringement of existing rights, where by reason of the special circumstances of the case, the redress at law would be inadequate." Mr. Pomeroy, however, distinguishes certain rights which the doctrines of equity jurisprudence alone create and recognize. It is well said that the central principles of equity being founded upon the "eternal verities of right and justice" rather than upon "arbitrary customs and rigid dogmas" it is far more elastic and more capable of expansion and extension than the common law, it therefore continually grows and expands, not arbitrarily, but in the direction of what have long since become welldefined and established principles. Lord Chancellor Cottenham observed: "that it is the duty of the courts of equity (and the same is true of all courts and of all institutions), to adopt its practice and course of proceedings, as far as possible, to the existing state of society, and to

apply its jurisdiction to all those new cases which, from the progress daily making in the affairs of men, must continually arise, and not from too strict adherence to forms and rules established under very different circumstances, decline to administer justice and to enforce rights for which there is no other remedy "

The constitution and laws of the United States have recognized equity as a part of the national jurisprudence. The equitable jurisdiction of the Federal courts extends throughout the Union, however State laws may affect the various State courts, and is "identical or equivalent in extent with that possessed by the English High Court of Chancery at the time of the Revolution excepting those ' peculiar administrative functions held by the Chancellor as representative of the crown in its character of parens patriae."

The remedy by injunction was borrowed by the early chancellors from the Roman Law. Mr. Pomeroy (in his great work on Equity Jurisprudence) states as a general principle that Whenever a right exists or is created by the ownership of property or otherwise, cognizable by law, a violation of that right will be prohibited, unless there are other considerations of policy or expediency which forbid a resort to this prohibitive remedy," these considerations are governed by, and depend upon, that fundamental principle which marks the limits of equitable jurisdiction generally, namely, the inadequacy and insufficiency of the legal remedy; in the concise language of Mr. Adams, therefore, we say: "Whenever damage is caused or threatened to property, admitted or legally adjudged to be the plaintiff's, by an act of the defendant, admitted or legally adjudged to be a civil wrong, and such damage is not adequately remediable by law, the inadequacy of the remedy at law is a sufficient equity, and will warrant an injunction against the commission or continuance of the wrong."

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and in restraining the breach of contracts, in proper cases; in abating nuisances; in restraining ultra vires or illegal acts

on the part of corporations; in preventing waste; in preventing irreparable torts, and in many other ways the remedy by injunction has come to be one of the most useful in our jurisprudence, and its practical abolition, as is threatened in some States, would be a very serious blow to the administration of justice between man and man.

It is generally said that equity will not restrain the commission of a crime, and so far as it goes this is true, that is, equity will not restrain the commission of a crime merely because it is a crime, the punitive remedy at law being deemed adequate; on the other hand, equity will not refuse to restrain an act which would be a nuisance or an irreparable injury to property or civil rights simply because that act is a crime. The punishment of the wrong-doer is no compensation to the victim, and when adequate damages cannot be recovered at law, or when no damages can compensate for the injury, a man would be left without any protection unless equity interpose and prevent the commission of the act. "The penalty for the contempt in violating an injunction is no substitute for, and no defense to, a prosecution for criminal offenses committed in course of such violation." The functions of the injunction are preventive merely. Many State statutes make special provisions for the abatement by injunction of certain disreputable places as nuisances, notwithstanding the fact that the keeping of these places is a crime. The principle itself seems so plain and the result of its exercise so beneficent that it is a surprise that any should question or oppose it, and yet we hear judges inveighed against, for "presuming" to enjoin the commission of acts which constitute irreparable injuries to property and are at the same time confessedly violations of the law. The pertinent question presents itself: "Should a man be heard to plead his own crime in order to oust the jurisdiction of a court of equity?" We can see but one answer to such a question.

Says the Court of Civil Appeals of Texas in State v. Patterson (37 S. W. R. 478): "In extending such protec

tion (by injunction) it (equity) may prevent a crime; but, as no one has a right to commit crime, no one should be heard to complain that he is restrained from its commission, when such restraint has been exercised in the jurisdiction of a court for the purpose of preventing him from irreparably injuring another in his property or civil rights.”

A well considered case on this subject is Columbiau Athletic Club v. State, 143 Ind. 98 (40 N. E. Rep. 914; 28 L. R. A. 727; 2 Am. & Eng. Dec..in Equity, 340), where is laid down the principle that, "Injunction will lie at the suit of the State against a corporation when it is misusing and abusing the corporate franchise and privileges, and is maintaining its property as a nuisance, though its acts also constitute a crime," and where numerous authorities are cited in its support.

Many similar instances might be cited showing the manifold and manifest usefulness of the injunction as to restrain the obstruction of navigable rivers; to restrain a railroad company from taking land for purposes not within its power; or from taking land contrary to the provisions. of its charter, or from obstructing a highway, or from illegally constructing or extending its tracks; to restrain a municipal corporation from making illegal appropriations or payments, from negotiating an illegal loan or from issuing unauthorized bonds; to restrain the keeping of a house of ill fame (Cranford v. Tywell, 128 N. Y. 341); to restrain the pollution of the waters of a stream (Barrett v. Mt. Greenwood Cem. Assn., 159 Ill. 385); to restrain the principals from proceeding with a contemplated prize-fight; (In re Corbett, 35 Am. L. Reg. 100), etc., etc.

In the cases above mentioned the peculiar and exclusive advantages of the remedy by injunction are seen readily aud at once, and, although many of the acts enjoined were punishable as crimes, we have not heard that outcry against the interference of the courts of equity which has greeted what may be called the "labor cases," although the use of the injunction in the one class of cases deserves as much to be called "government by injunction" as it does in the other.

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