MR. INGHAM FOR THE PROSECUTION.
Mr. George Ingham addressed the jury for the prosecution. He told them that there are verdicts which make history, and that theirs will be a history-making verdict. On the night of May 4, at 10 o’clock, Matthias J. Degan marched out of the Desplaines street station, full of life, and was soon afterward struck down by the hands of these defendants, not one of whom he had ever injured. The speaker told the jury again what “reasonable doubt” means. He said that the grand jury might have indicted 300 men instead of eight, but they saw fit to pick out the eight whom they deemed the leaders of the conspiracy against law and human life. There had been a good deal of talk, he said, about the constitutional right of free speech. The Constitution gave the people the right to meet and petition, but not to advise other people to commit murder. This right was based upon the old English common law, and in England was also found a definition of what constitutes incitement to murder. The case he was going to quote had also had another connection with the present one. It was brought in London in 1881 against Johann Most, who was then publishing his sheet, the Freiheit, in that city. It was shortly after the assassination of the Czar of Russia. He there advocated the assassination of all the heads of States, from Constantinople to Washington, and was convicted of inciting to murder. Mr. Ingham read the proceedings in the English court, the article upon which he was tried, and Lord Coleridge’s decision. Then he said: “It is shown that these defendants—Spies, Parsons, Schwab and Fischer—were engaged in the publication of articles in which they advised the destruction of the police by force, in which they advised working men to arm themselves with dynamite and be ready whenever the conflict should come to destroy the police force. For the publication of any one of these articles the defendants could have been convicted of a misdemeanor. And when Fielden that night told the people that war had been declared and that they must arm themselves to resist what had never taken place, he was guilty of a misdemeanor, and for that reason, if for no other, the police had a right to disperse the meeting. The treatment that Herr Most received in London shows you that the only salvation of a community is to enforce the letter of the law without sentiment, that bloodshed may be avoided. Herr Most was convicted for the publication of that article, and no English policemen have been blown up with dynamite. He came to this country, and the policemen who have been blown up are the American officers right here in this city. If we have not enforced the law it is high time that we enforce it now.”
Mr. Ingham then showed that the Haymarket meeting was a trap for the police designed for the purpose of leading them into a dark, dangerous place, the speeches being the bait, artfully increased until the police came to the alley and the bomb could be thrown. “Now who made the bomb? It is in evidence that Louis Lingg had been making bombs of a certain construction which Spies had said were superior, being of composite metal. It is in evidence that Lingg all the morning of May 4 was away from his house; that he upbraided Seliger for having made but one bomb. During the afternoon he was busy making bombs, and men came and went and worked at the bombs in his house. There is a story of a man who that day received bombs and dynamite from Lingg, showing that he distributed them.” Mr. Ingham read to the jury the chemical analysis of the bombs furnished by Drs. Haines and Delafontaine. What is the answer to all this? That the bomb was not thrown from the alley, but from thirty-eight feet south of the alley. And if they had satisfied you of that, was it not still thrown by one of the Anarchists—one of the conspirators? The bomb came from the conspiracy. And the moment it resulted in the death of Degan the crime of conspiracy was merged into the crime of murder.
“When Sumter was fired on, when the flag was insulted, when the attempt was made to destroy the Government, it was an attempt merely to change the form of government. When the bomb in this war was thrown it was the opening shot of a war which should destroy all government, destroy all law, leave men free to live as they see fit, and leave nothing to guide but the strong arm. I believe for myself that humanity—not merely our people, not merely we of America, but that humanity the wide world over—has no hope or no safety save the law. Law is the very shield that guards the progression of the race; it is the palladium of the liberty and lives of all people. Law which does not punish murder breeds death. Jurors who from the merciful instincts of their hearts hesitate to convict the guilty, are, in reality, mercilesssmerciless as the grave, for by their verdict they people graves with the innocent victims of midnight assassination and fill the mind with deeds of blood. Innocent blood from the days of Abel till now cries to Heaven for vengeance; innocent blood that contaminates the ground upon which it falls, and from it spring up dragon’s teeth. And now if you believe these men guilty, if you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt, as you cannot help but be, that these men were a party to a conspiracy unlawful in its nature, and that from that conspiracy a human life was taken, that they are murderers under that law, see to it that the majesty of the law of the state of Illinois is vindicated, and its penalties enforced. That is the demand upon you this day and this hour, not only of the people of the state of Illinois, but of humanity itself; for humanity, with all its fears, with all its hopes for future years, is hanging breathless on your fate.”