Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/986

948 Mr. Editor continues: "We can well afford to lose her who rehearsed 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 canvass 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 constitutional 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 banishing 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 class 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 class 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 class, 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 class 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 Constitution secure political rights. These persons, this large class, believe that the XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments to the national Constitution overrode and destroyed all those parts of State constitutions 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 class. 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,