Volume II Part 139 (1/2)
language broad enough to embrace all persons and cases.”--_Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wallace, p. 122._
It is true a jury was impaneled, but this was all, for we are informed that, at the conclusion of the opinion, Judge Selden requested that the case should be submitted to the jury upon the question of intent, and upon certain propositions of law; but the court declined to submit the case upon any question whatever, and directed them to render a verdict of guilty against the defendant.
I have been pained to witness, on the part of some of our newspapers, a disposition to treat this decision with indifference, by some even with levity. Has it come to this, that because she is a woman the defendant can not get a fair and impartial trial? The case of the inspectors was not treated in this way--but then they were men.
JUSTICE.
[_The Journal_, Thursday, July 30, 1874].
THE ALBANY LAW JOURNAL ON SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S CASE.
_To the Editor of the Syracuse Journal_:--I wish to call the attention of the readers of _The Journal_, especially legal ones, to the underlying intent and unjust perversions of the Albany _Law Journal_ of this month, in its leading article, ent.i.tled ”Can a Judge direct a Verdict of Guilty?”
This _Law Journal_, which professes to lead the legal craft of the Empire State in the devious ways of legal justice, has but now, thirteen months after its date, a review of Miss Anthony's celebrated trial, as conducted by Judge Ward Hunt. Having taken a year and a month to get the first principles of justice and of const.i.tutional law through his head, the belated editor of that law journal has come to the conclusion--self-evident as it ought to be to a child--that a judge has no legal right to take from an accused person the right of trial by jury. Sapient editor, wise man! No second Solomon, you. You, with all your legal lore, have at last managed to see, in a year and a month, what the veriest simple woman in the land, all uneducated as women are in the technicalities of the law, had no difficulty of seeing in an hour. Right of trial by jury holds all other legal rights within its grasp. Deprive a man or woman of that, and of what use is your habeas corpus act, of what use your law of penalties or acquittal? The terrors of the middle ages, the _lettres de cachet_, sequestration, confiscation, rayless dungeons, and iron masks at once rise in view.
We will, however, allow to this editor one grain of sense, as he acknowledges the dangerous power in the hands of judges of the United States Circuit Court, a power they possess outside of right, a power through which one of them can, as did Judge Ward Hunt in Miss Anthony's case, transcend his legal rights, to warp and bend const.i.tutional guarantees to his own ends, and having so done that there is no legal appeal from his unwarrantable decision. A United States judge is practically irresponsible. Nothing can touch him for illegality in office but a Congressional impeachment, which from a combination of circ.u.mstances is difficult to bring about. He holds the dearest rights of American citizens at pleasure in his hands, and this is law and justice in the United States. These are solely and entirely man-made laws. No woman had finger or tongue in the matter.
But Mr. Albany _Law Journal_ editor, after acknowledging their injustice toward accused persons, and their dangers to the liberties of every individual, tells Miss Anthony that ”if she” is dissatisfied with ”our laws,” meaning, of course, man-made laws like these, ”she would better adopt the methods of reform that men use, or, better still, emigrate.” Was ever a more disreputable phrase penned?
Disgraceful to its author, and doubly so, as he pretends to be a teacher of law. This is the language of a very Nero come to judgment.
”Our laws.” Whose laws, pray? The laws of men made for ”our” benefit alone. Is this what Mr. Editor of the Albany _Law Journal_ means?
Pray, Mr. Albany _Law Journal_, what are ”the methods of reform that men use,” when they are dissatisfied with ”our laws,” only to speak against such laws, and to vote for men to make better ones? Miss Anthony has tried both of ”the methods of reform men use,” and for doing the last was arrested, tried, fined, and all but imprisoned. It seems ”the methods of reform men use” are, after all, not just the kind of methods for Miss Anthony and her friends to use. But then, Mr.
Albany _Law Journal_ allows Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage one other alternative, which he deems a ”better one,” _i.e._, to ”emigrate.”
Mr. Editor continues: ”We can well afford to lose her who rehea.r.s.ed the story of her wrongs in public addresses, in twenty-nine of the post-office districts of Monroe, and twenty-one of Ontario, in her canva.s.s of those counties prior to her trial, and Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, who made a speech on this subject in Canandaigua and sixteen other towns of Ontario County, previous to Miss Anthony's trial, June 17, 1873, with a view, of course, of influencing public opinion in that region, so that a conviction could not be had.”
As Judge Hunt trampled on the citizen's right of trial by jury, so Mr.
Albany _Law Journal_ shows himself to be of the same ilk, by desiring to trample on that other guaranteed const.i.tutional right of free speech. He would ostracise Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage; he would banish them from the country because they dared to use one of ”the methods of reform that men use,” _i.e._, speaking of their ”wrongs” in order to educate and enlighten public opinion. If old Greece could banish her best citizen, Aristides, simply because he was her most just one, Miss Anthony and myself certainly ought to consider it a matter of self-gratulation that we are deemed fit for banishment because of our demand for justice; justice not merely for ourselves, but for one-half the nation.
That editor's contempt of rights and justice, as shown in his article, is simply amazing. He might as well have said in so many words, ”This country and its government is for the benefit of us males alone; you women are part and parcel of our property; if you are not suited with all things as we fix them for you, then get out from our country.”
This is the tenor of what Mr. Albany _Law Journal_ editor says. Does not every honest lawyer's face tingle with shame when he reads this disgraceful sentiment in that journal to which he so constantly looks for instruction in the higher departments of justice? Does not his republicanism revolt from such a sentiment? Does he not here recognize the enunciation of a principle as directly opposed to liberty as even Judge Hunt's control of jury trial?
This journal shows that the right to do a thing and the power to do it are distinctly separate. Judge Hunt did what he had the power to do, but not the right to do. Mr. _Law Journal_ possesses neither the right nor the power of banis.h.i.+ng those citizens who do not conform to his wishes, but he has evinced a desire to hold such power, and did he have it, the country would find in him a tyrant of the same cla.s.s as Judge Hunt.
As dilatory as this editor has been in reviewing this important case, he is equally timid in his criticism upon it. Currying to judicial and political power, he terms Judge Hunt's willful and knowing infraction of law ”a mistake,” but in regard to Miss Anthony, he says, ”she intended deliberately to break the law.” A large cla.s.s of people believe just the contrary. We who know Miss Anthony well, and who believe with her, know that, on the contrary, she intended to do an act which is protected by the law, instead of breaking law; she was acting under authority of the law. Because Judge Hunt defied the law; because the editor of the Albany _Law Journal_ is inexcusably ignorant of, or recklessly indifferent to the law, it does not follow that Miss Anthony belongs to that cla.s.s, or should be judged by their corrupt standard. Miss Anthony, in common with hundreds, nay, thousands of other women, as well as of a large cla.s.s of scholarly men--men of intelligence and a broad sense of justice--men, too, of political insight--fully believes that to woman, equally with man, does the Const.i.tution secure political rights. These persons, this large cla.s.s, believe that the XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments to the national Const.i.tution overrode and destroyed all those parts of State const.i.tutions which were, or are now, by expression contrary to their provisions, and they believe that the fundamental right of citizens of the United States is the right to take part in making the laws which shall govern them; the exercise of this right to be regulated (not prevented) by States. They do not concede Miss Anthony to have been a law-breaker as the Albany _Law Journal_, the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, and other friends of Judge Hunt concede her to have been. If the judiciary of the country is so far powerful, and so far irresponsible as to warp the law in favor of its own prejudices, even to the extent of preventing trial by jury, as Judge Hunt is conceded to have done, then our judiciary and not our criminals is our dangerous cla.s.s. With such judges as Hunt, who has attempted to crush out the trial by jury, and make of the jury merely an ornamental tail to his judicial kite; with such teachers as the Albany _Law Journal_, which, while acknowledging Hunt's outrageous illegality of action, yet calls it ”a mistake,” and speaks of him as ”a good and pure” man, the administrators and the expounders of law have become the most dangerous enemies of the people. The eminent Judge Brady recognizes the low condition of legal honor, and in a recent speech, said he hoped to see the day when his legal brethren would understand that it was their duty to a.s.sist in the administration of justice, and not to lend themselves to degrading efforts to defeat it. We commend these remarks to the consideration of Judge Hunt and the editor of the Albany _Law Journal_.
With that lack of self-respect which seems to inhere in all opponents of woman suffrage, that editor, in addition to all else, tries to indulge in a little facetiousness over the threadbare witticisms that Miss Anthony ”was a woman when she voted.” Coming down through the lips of Judge Hunt and the United States District Attorney of the prosecution, it reaches the law editor in time for him to say that ”on the trial of Miss Anthony she conceded that on the day of election she was a woman,” and in a parenthesis (”we know that she generally was a woman, and are not surprised to learn that she was on election day.”) What an amazing plat.i.tude this is to fall from the lips of a teacher of law. That the United States District Attorney engaged in the prosecution should degrade the dignity of the law by the question (to Judge Selden) ”if it was conceded that on the day of election Miss Anthony was a woman?” to which the reply was, ”Yes, now and ever heart and soul a woman”; that Judge Hunt should ask her ”if she voted as a female”? to which he got the answer, ”No, sir, I voted as a citizen of the United States”; those questions, I say, were not so much a matter of surprise under the peculiar forms of the trial, but that a law journal should so far forget its dignity; should so far descend from argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of s.e.x; that it should so far stoop from a canva.s.s of the most important trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and certainly has a tendency to convince the female portion of the country that the male man is fast losing his right to the definition of ”man, a reasoning animal.”
In regard to that editor's expressed desire that the case of Miss Anthony should have gone to the jury, as they would have brought in a verdict of guilty, I will inform him that one of those jurymen told me his verdict would have been ”not guilty” had he been allowed by Judge Hunt to express his opinions, ”nor would he have been alone.” This was just what Hunt knew and feared and was determined should not take place. Therefore he gagged the jury and ordered the verdict of guilty entered--a verdict which, as this editor acknowledges, was never rendered.
_Fayetteville, N. Y._ MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.
ULYSSES S. GRANT,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
_To all to whom those Presents shall come, Greeting_: