Back Jailed for Freedom
Chapters (39)
  1. Feature
  2. Preface
  3. Part I
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Chapter 2
  6. Part II
  7. Chapter 1
  8. Chapter 2
  9. Chapter 3
  10. Part III
  11. Chapter 1
  12. Chapter 2
  13. Chapter 3
  14. Chapter 4
  15. Chapter 5
  16. Chapter 6
  17. Chapter 7
  18. Chapter 8
  19. Chapter 9
  20. Chapter 10
  21. Chapter 11
  22. Chapter 12
  23. Chapter 13
  24. Chapter 14
  25. Chapter 15
  26. Chapter 16
  27. Chapter 17
  28. Chapter 18
  29. Chapter 19
  30. Chapter 20
  31. Chapter 21
  32. Chapter 22
  33. Chapter 23
  34. Chapter 24
  35. Chapter 25
  36. Chapter 26
  37. Chapter 27
  38. You are reading a Deluxe Edition:
  39. Copyright

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.