Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government’s case,
Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written before the case
had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty.
The jury was dismissed without deliberation and a new trial was
refused. On the following day this scene took place in that New York
court room.
JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner
anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your
ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital
principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my
political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of
the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status
of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually,
but all my sex are, by your Honor’s verdict doomed to political
subjection under this so-called republican form of government.
JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument which
the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the question,
but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be
pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is
the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of
my right of representation as one taxed, the denial of my right to a
trial by jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the
denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property, and——
JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.
Miss ANTHONY—But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor
privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my citizen’s
rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my
arrest last November this is the first time that either myself or any
person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense
before judge or jury
JUDGE HUNT—The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.
Miss ANTHONY—Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery politician
who entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner,
district attorney, district judge, your Honor on the bench, not one is
my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns . . . . Precisely
as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon the jury and no
woman is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted
lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain
admission to the bar-hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of
superior class.
JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried according
to the established forms of law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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