Page:The Chicago Martyrs (1899).pdf/133

 Rh honest about the thing; going to tell us what he was going to prove, and in the middle of the trial he brings up this man Gilmer, a wholly unexpected thing to us, and that was the hair upon which hung the thread which connected us with Mathias Degan, and the instrumentality by which the verdict was brought about. The State's attorney said he was not going to conceal anything and then concealed the very thing that was material.

Now, your honor, this confession that certain testimony was sprung upon us at the trial, this Gilmer matter, for instance, when no earthly opportunity was given us to meet it, and Captain Schaack's admission, that we would have been acquitted a thousand times over, if we had known this evidence and then been permitted to contradict it and explain it; this confession, says Boston Liberty, commenting upon this infamous proceeding, is equivalent to a confession that we were innocent and that Captain Schaack knew we were innocent, or what is the same thing, that he knew that there was evidence that would have acquitted us a thousand times over if we had been allowed to produce it; but he glories in the fact that he was too smart for us; that by keeping this evidence secret from us and the public he was enabled to bring us into the trap; a trap, your honor, a trap which he and one other man—I suppose he refers to the State's attorney—had prepared for us, and thus secured our conviction.

Now, if this is not a confession that Captain Schaack and one other man, an accomplice, set themselves deliberately to work to procure the judicial murder of seven innocent men, men whom they declare themselves to be innocent men, known by him and his accomplice to be innocent, then what is it? Plainly, it is nothing else. Schaack's confession that our evidence was such that, if permitted to be introduced it would have acquitted us a thousand times over, is equivalent to a confession that it is true, and that to procure our conviction by the suppression of this evidence was to procure the judicial murder of innocent men. And this work, says Captain Schaack, is to go on until he has all the Anarchists in jail, hung, or driven out of the city.

Your honor, I would like to make a remark right here. What stronger evidence can be required to prove the infamous character of what are called our criminal courts? Evidently, the courts are criminal, whether the persons they convict are criminal or not. Under such a condition of things as this, manifestly, a trial can have no color of justice or reason or be anything else than a conspiracy to convict a man, whether he be innocent or guilty, unless he is permitted to know what it is that they propose to prove upon him. This would be just, but justice and law are quite different things.

Now, as a part of this foul conspiracy the district attorney sprung his witness, Gilmer, upon us when it was too late for us to prove him to be a suborned, perjured liar, and the confession of this man Schaack is one that concerns the American people. They are bound to take notice of it. This trial, your honor, is not simply the trial and condemnation of seven Anarchists, but it is the trial of the government of the State of Illinois, as represented by the gentlemen in this prosecution, and the government of the United States itself. The oppressions of which we complain are such as the government of the United States is responsible for, and such as many millions of people, in fact, nearly all the people in the United States, are crying out against. You need