Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/697

 THE MUBSEL SLOUGH CASE, 685 �brace those or not, is a question for you to determine npon ail the evidence, and not for me. You have heard the lan- guage of the resolution, and I merely call your attention to that as one of the circumstances -which are relied upon as tending to show a conspiracy to hold these lands at ail events and against ail authority. �Now, I shall not go minutely into these other circumstances, of midnight raids, or as to who performed them, or the notices given to persons who purchased of the railroad company against the wishes and consent of the league ; nor especially refer to those persons whose houses were burned; nor to those masked men who, by their threats, induced the agent of the company, who was there to grade the lands, to leave ; nor to the midnight pursuit by masked men of those who dared to purchase of the railroad company, — except to call your atten- tion to them as circumstances which are claimed on the part of the prosecution as tending to show the length and breadth of this conspiracy, if there was any such conspiracy. The gov- emment claims that there was a conspiracy, and claims that it not only extended to the lands, but, further, that it extended to an intention to resist the process of the lower courts, at least until a decision should be had from the supreme court of the United States. These are circumstances which you are entitled to consider in connection with ail the other cir- cumstances of the case. But 1 shall pass over this withont any further comment — without any comment as to the credi- bility of the testimony, or as to the fact at ail, except that the testimony points to this organization as the only one having any cause of complaint against the parties settling upon those particular lands, or purchasing those lands froni ihe company. �We will come down now, gentlemen, to the eleventh of May. The testimony is claimed to show that it was known in that district by many, and, by some of the defendants at least, prior to the eleventh of May, that executions had been is- 8ued, but the testimony of the witnesses is that they did not know at what time the marshal would appear; that a meeting was called at Hanford on the morning of the elev- ����