The district-attorney followed with a two hours' speech. Then Judge Hunt, without leaving the bench, delivered a written opinion6 to the effect that the Fourteenth Amendment, under which Miss Anthony claimed the authority to vote, "was a protection, not to all our rights, but to our rights as citizens of the United States only; that is, the rights existing or belonging to that condition or capacity." At its conclusion he directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty.
Miss Anthony's counsel insisted that the Court had no power to make such a direction in a criminal case and demanded that the jury be permitted to bring in its own verdict. The judge made no reply except to order the clerk to take the verdict. Mr. Selden demanded that the jury be polled. Judge Hunt refused, and at once discharged the jury without allowing them any consultation or asking if they agreed upon a verdict. Not one of them had spoken a word. After being discharged, the jurymen talked freely and several declared they should have brought in a verdict of "not guilty."
The next day Judge Selden argued the motion for a new trial on seven exceptions, but this was denied by Judge Hunt. The following scene then took place in the courtroom:
Judge Hunt.—(Ordering the defendant to stand up). Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
Miss Anthony.—Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually but all of my sex are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of government.
Judge Hunt.—The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of argument which the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
Miss Anthony.—May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property and—
Judge Hunt.—The Court can not allow the prisoner to go on.
Miss Anthony.—But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that, since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury—
Judge Hunt.—The prisoner must sit down—the Court can not allow it.
Miss Anthony.—Of all my prosecutors, from the corner grocery politician who entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner, district-attorney, district-judge, your honor on the bench—not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Under such circumstances a commoner of England, tried before a jury of lords, would have far less cause to complain than have I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the bar—hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of the superior class.
Judge Hunt.—The Court must insist—the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.
Miss Anthony.—Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against women; and hence your honor's ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of the "citizen's right to vote," simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But yesterday, the same man-made forms of law declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive tracking his way to Canada; and every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over or under or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must women take it to get their right to a voice in this government; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.
Judge Hunt.—The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word.
Miss Anthony.—When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, which should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis—which should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice—failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers—I ask not leniency at your hands but rather the full rigor of the law.
Judge Hunt—The Court must insist—[Here the prisoner sat down.] The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony rose again.] The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution. Miss Anthony.—May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a debt of $10,000, incurred by publishing my paper—The Revolution—the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, which tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while denying them the right of representation in the government; and I will work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
Judge Hunt.—Madam, the Court will not order you to stand committed until the fine is paid.
Thus ended the great trial, "The United States of America vs. Susan B. Anthony." From this date the question of woman suffrage was lifted from one of grievances into one of Constitutional Law.
This was Judge Hunt's first criminal case after his elevation to the Supreme Bench of the United States. He was appointed at the solicitation of his intimate friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, and had an interview with him immediately preceding this trial. Mr. Conkling was an avowed enemy of woman suffrage. Miss Anthony always has believed that he inspired the course of Judge Hunt and that his decision was written before the trial, a belief shared by most of those associated in the case.
Miss Anthony says in her journal: "The greatest judicial outrage history ever recorded! No law, logic or demand of justice could change Judge Hunt's will. We were convicted before we had a hearing and the trial was a mere farce." Some time afterwards Judge Selden wrote her: "I regard the ruling of the judge, and also his refusal to submit the case to the jury, as utterly indefensible." Scarcely a newspaper in the country sustained Judge Hunt's action. The Canandaigua Times thus expressed the general sentiment in an editorial, soon after the trial:
The decisions of Judge Hunt in the Anthony case have been widely criticised, and it seems to us not without reason. Even among those who accept the conclusion that women have not