Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/983

Rh and logic are both against it. Women will not be voters possibly for some years to come; it is not desirable that the franchise should come too quick; but they are certain to have the full privilege of citizenship in the end.

The Ku-Klux prisoners are, it seems, now to be released. They are persons some of whom had committed assaults and other offenses cognizable by the laws of the States where they lived, and the Ku-Klux legislation by Congress was a political device as unnecessary as it was unconstitutional. Perhaps the most ridiculous, as well as the must unjust prosecution under the Ku-Klux law was that instituted against Miss Anthony for voting in Rochester. Under her view of her rights, she presented herself at the polls, and submitted her claims to the proper officers, who decided that she had a right to vote. She practiced no fraud or concealment of any kind. She did what every good citizen here would do, if any doubt arose from assessment, registration, or residence, as to his right to vote. He would state the case to the election officers, and abide their decision. Yet this, we are told, is a criminal offense under the Ku-Klux law, for which a citizen who has done exactly what he ought to have done, may te fined and imprisoned as a criminal. Nay, if, as often happens, a point of doubt is submitted to our Court of Common Pleas and decided in favor of the applicant, be is still liable to criminal prosecution under the Federal Ku-Klux law, if a United States Commissioner or Judge differs from the State Judge in the construction of the State law. Since the victims of the Ku-Klux act are now receiving pardons, we hope the fine of $100 unlawfully imposed on Miss Anthony may be remitted. We do not think there was a case of more gross injustice ever practiced under forms of law, than the conviction of that lady for a criminal offense in voting, with the assent of the legal election officers to whom her right was submitted. If all the victims of this unconstitutional law were as innocent as she was, they can not be too soon released. Even those who were guilty of offenses cognizable by the State law, were unjustly tried and condemned under an unconstitutional statute passed for political effect.

The case of Miss Susan B. Anthony seems to be dismissed with a laugh by most of the press; but from the first Institution of a prosecution against her under the Ku-Klux law, we have regarded the proceeding as one in which the injustice was not cloaked by the absurdity. The law was passed by Congress on a political cry that massacre and outraze menaced negroes at the polls in the Southern States, and now we have it used to oppress a woman in Rochester, New York. We are not debarred from saying "oppressed" because the judge left the fine to be levied on her property instead of imprisoning her person—in a State in which women have, we suppose, long been exempt from imprisonment for debt. But the chief outrage in the case is that it affords the first case, we believe, In the United States, or anywhere in modern times, of a conviction for a crime when there was no criminal intent. The proof, or the presumption of this, is essential to a crime in the criminal law of every civilized nation. The case of Miss Anthony was that of a lady who believed that the much vaunted amendments of the Federal Constitution extended to white women; and many lawyers and Congressmen have also avowed this opinion. We do not bold it, but we do not doubt that Miss Anthony does, very sincerely. We think as the Judge says in her case, that the Federal Constitution has nothing to do with the matter; that is wholly regulated by the Constitution of New York. But every word of his argument was equally strong to show that he, a Federal Judge, had nothing to do with the matter, and that it wholly belonged to the courts of New York. They know, we presume, no law that can create a crime without a criminal intention, and we deny the right of Congress or any earthly authority to pass so monstrous a law. Every day in criminal courts that point arises, If a man charged with larceny is proved to have taken the goods of another, but under some ides that he had a right to them, no matter how erroneous, the criminal prosecution ls instantly dis-