167. Such unconstitutional legislation by Congress was the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, which declared that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States should be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.[475] Here again the essential matter is one of jurisdiction, or sovereignty. The several States have jurisdiction over the matters comprised within the so-called Civil Rights Bill. Inn-keepers, public carriers, owners or managers of theaters and public halls are bound, to the extent of their facilities, to furnish proper accommodations to all unobjectionable persons who in good faith apply for them. No race or class is a special favorite of the laws, and the enjoyment of accommodations in inns, public conveyances, and places of amusement, is not a “privilege or immunity” of a citizen, in the sense that he or she possesses a civil or legal right to such enjoyment. The act, or decision, of a mere individual,—the owner of an inn, or of a public conveyance, or place of amusement, refusing such accommodation, is not the imposition of a badge of slavery or involuntary servitude upon the applicant; neither does such act or decision inflict a civil injury, unless the law of the State makes such act or decision an injury.[476] The principle here involved is illustrated by a law of California, held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, that “due process of law” is not denied to a person who, in that State, by its law, was “prosecuted by information,” and (as was claimed) was “tried and illegally found guilty of (murder) without any presentment or indictment of any grand or other jury.”[477] The Court sustained the State law as securing due process of law in principle,—that “prosecution by information” instead of “indictment of a jury” is not a violation of the principle but merely a variation of the form of due process of law.[478] In other words, the California law in no way disparaged or abridged the privileges or immunities of the citizen.[479] 168. The principle regulating the definition of United States citizenship is that principle of the common law which recognizes “the ancient rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion.”[480]