THE MAYOR HEARD THE SPEECH.
“Mayor Harrison, who was present and heard this speech, testified before the jury that it was simply ‘a violent and political harangue’ and did not call for his interference as a peace officer. The speech delivered by me at the Haymarket, and which I repeated before the jury is a matter of record and undisputed, and I challenge any one to show therein that I incited any one to acts of violence. The extract reported by Mr. English, when taken in connection with what preceded and what followed, cannot be construed by the wildest imagination as incitement to violence. Extracts from three other speeches alleged to have been delivered by me were made more than one year prior to May 4, 1886, are given. Two of these speeches were reported from the memory of the Pinkerton detective Johnson. These are the speeches quoted by the court as proof of my guilt as accessory to the murder of Degan. Where, then, is the connection between these speeches and the murder of Degan? I am bold to declare that such connection is imperceptible to the eye of a fair and unprejudiced mind. But the honorable body, the Supreme Court of Illinois, has condemned me to death for speeches I never made, and for articles I never wrote. In the affirmation of the death sentence the court has ‘assumed,’ ’supposed,’ ‘guessed,’ ’surmised,’ and ‘presumed’ that I can and did ’so and so.’ This the record fully proves.
“The court says: ‘Spies, Schwab, Parsons and Engel were responsible for the articles written and published by them, as above shown; Spies, Schwab, Fielden, Parsons and Engel were responsible for the speeches made by them respectively, and there is evidence in the same record tending to show that the death of Degan occurred during the prosecution of a conspiracy planned by the members of the international groups who read these articles and heard these speeches.’