Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/975

Rh I had learned from the same source that Miss Anthony had made such an effort in Monroe County, and it was stated elsewhere that her trial had been sent thence to Ontario County by reason of such efforts to persuade juries of the justice of her cause. I can scarcely credit these statements.

Reduced to simple terms, it is an attempt by public lectures and female influence, by an accused party so to affect jurors 'that a jury of twelve men can not be found in that county who will render a verdict of guilty.' If this may be a part of the administration of justice, then the United States Attorney may by similar or other means attempt beforehand to secure an opposite result; and the administration of justice is brought into contempt, and corruption has entered the jury-box. . . . There is a statute and common law offense known as embracery, which is defined to consist "in such practices as lead to affect the administration of justice, improperly working upon the minds of jurors. It seems clear, adds Russell in his Treatise on Laws and Misdemeanors, 'that any attempt whatever to corrupt or influence or instruct a jury in the cause beforehand, or any way incline them to be more favorable to the one side than the other, by money, letters, threats, or persuasions, except only by the strength of evidence and the arguments of the counsel in, is a proper act of , whether the jurors upon whom the attempt is made give any verdict or not, and whether the verdict given be true or false.' . . . I trust no merely temporary excitement in respect to female suffrage will lead good citizens to sanction any attempt whatever to influence jurors out of Court, either before or during the trial of a cause. It is alike an insult to the juror and an imputation on our public virtue.

2em

May 24, 1873.

The arrest of the fifteen women of Rochester, and the imprisonment of the renowned Miss Susan B. Anthony, for voting at the November election, afford a curious illustration of the extent to which the United States Government is stretching its hand in these matters. If these women violated any law at all by voting, it was clearly a statute of the State of New York, and that State might be safely left to to vindicate the majesty of its own laws. Is is only by an overstrained construction of the XIV. and XV. Amendments, that the National Government can force its long finger into the Rochester case at all.

But so it is. Eager to crowd in and regulate the elections at every poll In the Union, the power at Washington strikes down a whole State Government in Louisiana, and holds to bail a handful of women in New York. Nothing can escape its eye or elude its grasp. It can soar high; it can stoop low. It can enjoin a Governor in New Orleans; it can jug a woman in Rochester. Nothing is too big for it to grapple with; nothing is too small for it to meddle with.... By the by, we advise Miss Anthony not to go to jail. Perhaps she feels that she deserves some punishment for voting for General Grant, but it is a bailable offense. "Going to jail for the good of the cause" may do for poetry, but it becomes very prosaic when reduced to practice. Let Miss Anthony enter into bonds, adjust her spectacles, face her accusers, and argue her own case.

The Worcester Spy said: Miss Susan B. Anthony, whatever else she may be, is evidently of the right stuff for a reformer. Of all the woman suffragists she has the most courage and resource, and fights her own and her sisters' battle with the most wonderful energy, resolution, and hopefulness. It is well known that she is now under indictment for voting illegally in Rochester last November. Voting illegally in her case means simply voting, for it is held that women can not lawfully vote at all. She is to be tried soon, but in the meantime, while at large on bail, she has devoted her time to missionary work on behalf of woman suffrage, and has spoken, it is said, in almost every school district in Monroe County, where her trial would have been held in the natural course of things. She has argued her cause so well that almost all the male population of the county has been converted to her views on this subject. The District Attorney is afraid to trust the case to a jury from that county, and has obtained a change of venue to Ontario on the ground that a fair trial can not be had in Monroe.

Miss Anthony, rather cheered than discouraged by this unwilling testimony to the strength of her cause and her powers of persuasion, has made arrangements to canvass On