And the Walls Came Tumbling Down by Michael S Lief & H. Mitchell Caldwell

Author:Michael S Lief & H. Mitchell Caldwell
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2004-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

JUDGE HUNT:(Ordering the defendant to stand up) Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

ANTHONY:Yes, Your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot 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 of my sex are, by Your Honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.

JUDGE HUNT:The Court cannot listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

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 concert as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property, and—

JUDGE HUNT:The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.

ANTHONY:But Your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed 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.

ANTHONY:All of my prosecutors, from the eighth ward 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; and had Your Honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, the Honorable Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably, before Your Honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the franchise, so, none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and

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