SENTENCE PRONOUNCED.
Parsons spoke altogether nearly nine hours, and the addresses of all the prisoners occupied three days. Thousands of people were turned away during the closing days, and the scene in the courtroom when sentence was pronounced was peculiarly impressive. At the close of Parsons’ remarks Judge Gary delivered the following remarks, and pronounced the death sentence:
“I am quite well aware that what you have said, although addressed to me, has been said to the world; yet nothing has been said which weakens the force of the proof or the conclusions therefrom upon which the verdict is based. You are all men of intelligence, and know that if the verdict stands, it must be executed. The reasons why it shall stand I have already sufficiently stated in deciding the motion for a new trial. I am sorry beyond any power of expression for your unhappy condition and for the terrible events that have brought it about. I shall address to you neither reproaches nor exhortation. What I shall say, shall be said in the faint hope that a few words from a place where the people of the State of Illinois have delegated the authority to declare the penalty of a violation of their laws, and spoken upon an occasion solemn and awful as this, may come to the knowledge of and be heeded by the ignorant, deluded and misguided men who have listened to your counsels and followed your advice. I say in the faint hope; for if men are persuaded that because of business differences, whether about labor or anything else, they may destroy property and assault and beat other men, and kill the police, if they, in the discharge of their duty, interfere to preserve the peace, there is little ground to hope that they will listen to any warning. It is not the least among the hardships of the peaceable, frugal and laborious poor to endure the tyranny of mobs, who, with lawless force, dictate to them, under penalty of peril to limb and life, where, when and upon what terms they may earn a livelihood for themselves and their families. Any government that is worthy of the name will strenuously endeavor to secure to all within its jurisdiction freedom to follow the lawful avocations and safety for their property and their persons, while obeying the law, and the law is common sense. It holds each man responsible for the natural and probable consequences of his own acts. It holds that whoever advises murder is himself guilty of the murder that is committed pursuant to his advice, and if men band together for a forcible resistance to the execution of the law and advise murder as a means of making such resistance effectual, whether such advice be to one man to murder another, or to a numerous class to murder men of another class, all who are so banded together are guilty of any murder that is committed in pursuance of such advice. The people of this country love their institutions, they love their homes, they love their property. They will never consent, that by violence and murder, those institutions shall be broken down, their homes despoiled, and their property destroyed. And the people are strong enough to protect and sustain their institutions and to punish all offenders against their laws; and those who threaten danger to civil society, if the law is enforced, are leading to destruction whoever may attempt to execute such threats. The existing order of society can be changed only by the will of the majority. Each man has the full right to entertain and advocate by speech and print such opinions as suits himself, and the great body of the people will usually care little what he says. But if he proposes murder as a means of enforcing he puts his own life at stake. And no clamor about free speech or the evils to be cured or the wrongs to be redressed, will shield him from the consequences of his crime. His liberty is not a license to destroy. The toleration that he enjoys he must extend to others, and not arrogantly assume that the great majority are wrong and may rightfully be coerced by terror, or removed by dynamite. It only remains that for the crime you have committed, and of which you have been convicted after a trial unexampled in the patience with which an outraged people have extended to you every protection and privilege of the law which you derided and defied, that the sentence of that law be now given. In form and detail that sentence will appear upon the records of the Court. In substance and effect it is that the defendant Neebe be imprisoned in the State Penitentiary at Joliet at hard labor for the term of fifteen years. And that each of the other defendants, between the hours of ten o’clock in the forenoon and two o’clock in the afternoon of the third day of December next, in the manner provided by the statute of this state, be hung by the neck until he is dead. Remove the prisoners.”
Mrs. Parsons.
Stay of sentence in the case of Neebe was granted until December 3, the date set for the execution of the other principles; and the counsel for the condemned Anarchists announced that they should file a bill of exceptions before the Illinois Supreme Court, and petition for a supersedeas.