Page:The Martyrdom of Ferrer.djvu/94

88 was in Barcelona on the 26th. For the 27th we have the Masnou and Premia witnesses I have already noticed—nineteen of whom merely testify that Ferrer did speak to their alcalde (which he did not deny), the subject being unknown to them. Most of them only recognised Ferrer when the police submitted a photograph to assist them. Of the fresh witnesses introduced one has "a moral conviction" that the rioters were instigated by Ferrer, and the other heard rioters declare that they were so instigated. All of them merely retail the gossip of the crowd.

These are the fifty witnesses for the prosecution. With their private interests at stake—most of the chief witnesses are purchasing their liberation from prison—their hearsay evidence, their moral convictions, and the complete irrelevance of more than half of them, a cross-examining lawyer would have had an easy time. Even as it is, not a single witness testifies that he personally saw Ferrer commit violence; every witness who assigns Ferrer an active leadership does so on hearsay evidence: the rest report conversations with Ferrer, which he entirely denies, and which secured "provisional liberty" for themselves.

The prosecuting orator (or Fiscal) turns to the documentary proof. First is the revolutionary document (quite clear of suggestions of pillage and assassination) which Ferrer acknowledged drawing up in 1892. In face of the mass of evidence as to his change of feeling, it is quite irrelevant. Then we have two type-written circulars (of unknown date) with the now familiar suggestions of plunder and murder. How are these forgeries brought home to Ferrer? We notice that the prosecution does not make the least suggestion, as later writers did in the English Press, that they were "posted up in Ferrer's schools." That would be too stupid a thing to suggest to a group of Spanish officers. The whole case for the prosecution—as they could not pretend that these were found among Ferrer's papers in the presence of the family—is that three letters are corrected in ink, and that certain "experts," not named or presented, declare that the written letters are like letters in Ferrer's writing! This is followed by an undated, unimportant letter to Odon de Buen, one of the most distinguished men