UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY.

REX V. BRODRIBB.

[6 C. & P. 571.]

Brodribb and sixteen other poachers met at a house one night to prepare for an expedition, and after blackening their faces so as to be disguised, Brodribb made them take an oath of secrecy. The law prohibited any one from administering an oath concerning an unlawful assembly, and Brodribb was subsequently indicted. The judges held that this was an "unlawful assembly." It was impossible, said Holoyd J., that a meeting to go out with faces thus disguised at night and under such circumstances, could be anything else than an unlawful assembly.

An unlawful assembly is a mere meeting of persons, three or more in number, to disturb the peace in a tumultuous manner or to do an unlawful act. In Reg. v. Vincent, 9 C. & P. 109, Baron Alderson explained the law as to unlawful assemblies in a very clear and concise manner. "I take it," said he, "to be the law of the land that any meeting assembled under such circumstances as according to the opinion of rational and firm men, are likely to produce danger to the tranquility and peace of the neighborhood is an unlawful assembly. You will have to say whether, looking at all the circumstances, these defendants attended an unlawful assembly, and for this purpose you will take into your consideration the way in which the meetings were held, the hour of the day at which the parties met, and the language used by the persons assembled and by those who addressed them. Every one has a right to act in such cases as he may judge right, provided it is not injurious to another; but no man, or number of men, has & right to cause alarm

to the body of persons who are called the public. You will con. sider how far these meetings partook of that character, and whether firm and rational men having their families and property there, would have reasonable ground to fear a breach of the peace, for I quite agree with the learned counsel for the defendant, that the alarm must not be merely such as would frighten any foolish or timid person, but must be such as would alarm persons of reasonable firmness and courage."

Nearly allied to this offense are the offenses of rout and riot. See State v. Sumner, post 1, p.130 and State v. Brazil, post, p. 132. The difference between these three crimes has been illustrated thus: A hundred men armed with sticks, meet together at night to consult about the destruction of a fence which their landlord has erected this is an unlawful assembly. They march out together from the place of meeting to the direction of the fence - this is a rout. They arrive at the fence, and amid great confusion, violently pull it down-this is a riot. Harris, C. L. 93.

9

ROUT.

STATE v. SUMNER.

66

[2 Speers, 599.]

General Daniel Wallace, of the village of Union, and State of South Carolina, being duly sworn deposed as follows: "I am a justice of the peace. I was going down the main street of the village one afternoon when I saw a great crowd assembled. I asked what was going on and was told by a by-stander that a prize-fight was about to take place between Scales and Faucet for $100 a side. Looking through the crowd I saw the combatants with their heads shaved, and the money ready staked. The crowd was very much excited. I never saw such a tumult in the village before. I, as a magistrate, immediately interfered and announced that the fight should not take place. Scales said he did not wish to do anything that was illegal, but Faucet's second said that they should fight if they liked - nobody should crowd him, if he knew himself. I then went to my office, but the tumult increasing I went back and saw that everything was ready for the fight to commence. I then called on the officer and they arrested the principals and their seconds." It was held on this evidence that the parties arrested were guilty of rout. "The parties," said Butler, J., "had, no doubt, assembled with a common intent to commit a breach of the peace. Preparations had been

made for the combat, and blows only were necessary to constitute the offense of riot beyond all doubt. What degree of execution of their purpose will convert a rout into a riot, it may be often difficult to determine. But this case does not require any such distinction to be made. The preparatory battle, the staking of money, will clearly make them guilty of a rout.'

A rout as we have seen (ante, p. 129), is an unlawful assembly, which proceeds to execute its unlawful object, but does not actually execute it. As Sumner's Case shows, it differs from a riot only in the circumstance that the enterprise is not actually carried out. Mr. Justice Stephen gives this apt definition. "A rout is an unlawful assembly which has made a motion toward the execution of the common purpose of the persons assembled," and illustrates it thus: A. B. and C. meet at A.'s house for the purpose of beating D. who lives a mile off. They then go together to D., and there beat him. At A.'s house the meeting is an unlawful assembly; on the road it is a rout, and when the attack is made upon D. it is a riot.

RIOT.

STATE v. BRAZIL.

[Rice, 257.]

A band of young roysterers in the town of Fairfield, who dubbed themselves the "dog-tail dragoons," and thought it great fun to make night hideous with their noises, marched through the streets after dark, shooting guns and pistols, blowing horns and uttering unearthly yells. The citizens, especially the females, were pretty thoroughly scared, and lost no time when the day broke in finding out the parties and bringing them to court.

The roysterers were convicted of riot. The court said that their conduct had, very naturally, alarmed the citizens. "If," said Evans, J., "a tumultuous or noisy act be accompanied by no circumstances calculated to excite terror or alarm in others, it would not amount to a riot as if a dozen men assemble together in a forest, and blow horns or shoot guns, or such acts, it would not be a riot. But if the same party were to assemble at the hour of midnight in the streets of Charleston or Columbia, and were to march through the streets crying fire, blowing horns, and shooting guns, few, I apprehend, would hesitate in pronouncing it a riot, although there might be no ordi