Fielden continued: "It makes a great deal of difference, perhaps, what kind of a revolutionist a man is. The men who have been on trial here for Anarchy have been asked the question on the witness stand if they were revolutionists. It is not generally considered to be a crime among intellectual people to be a revolutionist, but it may be made a crime if a revolutionist happens to be poor. * * * If I had known that I was being tried for Anarchy I could have answered that charge. I could have justified it under the constitutional right of every citizen of this country, and more than the right which any constitution can give, the natural right of the human mind to draw its conclusion from whatever information it can gain, but I had no opportunities to show why I was an Anarchist. I was told that I was to be hung for being an Anarchist, after I had got through defending myself on the charge of murder." Fielden related that he was born in Lancashire; that his first speech was made to starving operatives in the streets of his native town; that it was here he began to hate kings and queens; his first speech was in support of the operatives of Lancashire as against the sympathizers with the South in the American rebellion; he came to the United States in 1868 and was a Methodist exhorter in Ohio, and came to Chicago in 1869. Fielden detailed how he had come to be a Socialist and Anarchist; reviewing the various speeches he had made at meetings in Chicago; attacking the veracity of witnesses who had testified against him, and declaring himself the victim of illegal prosecution. He continued: