After the halting beginning his words began to flow more freely as he felt himself stirred by the impassioned moment. He held a small piece of paper in one hand, and every now and then he slapped the railing of the cage with the other.
“I never know, never heard, even read in history anything so cruel as this Court. After seven years prosecuting they still consider us guilty. And these gentle people are arrayed with us in this court today.
“I know the sentence will be between two class, the oppressed class and the rich class, and there will be always collision between one and the other. We fraternize the people with the books, with the literature. You persecute the people, tyrannize over them and kill them. We try the education of people always. You try to put a path between us and some other nationality that hates each other. That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been the oppressed class. Well, you are the oppressor.
“You know it, Judge Thayer—you know all my life, you know why I have been here, and after seven years that you have been persecuting me and my poor wife, you still today sentence us to death. I would like to tell all my life, but what is the use? You know all about what I say before, and my friend—that is, my comrade—will be talking, because he is more familiar with the language, and I will give him a chance. My comrade, the man kind, the kind man to all children, you sentence him two times, in the Bridgewater case and the Dedham case, connected with me, and you know he is innocent. You forget all the population that has been with us for seven years, to sympathize and give us all their energy and all their kindness. You do not care for them. Among that peoples and the comrades and the working class there is a big legion of intellectual people which have been with us for seven years, but to not commit the iniquitous sentence, but still the Court goes ahead. And I think I thank you all, you peoples, my comrades who have been with me for seven years, with the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and I will give my friend a chance.
“I forgot one thing which my comrade remember me. As I said before, Judge Thayer know all my life, and he know I am never been guilty, never—not yesterday nor today nor forever.”
In five minutes it was over, and for an instant the atmosphere of the courtroom loosened with a rustling and shuffle of feet and a few coughs, then tightened as Clerk Worthington called on Vanzetti.
As he stood up, Vanzetti appeared calm, almost cheerful, and his voice at the beginning was deceptively gentle. He held a few penciled notes.
“Yes. What I say is that I am innocent, not only of the Braintree crime, but also of the Bridgewater crime. That I am not only innocent of these two crimes, but in all my life I have never stole and I have never killed and I have never spilled blood. That is what I want to say. And it is not all. Not only am I innocent of these two crimes, not only in all my life I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood, but I have struggled all my life, since I began to reason, to eliminate crime from the earth.
“Everybody that knows these two arms knows very well that I did not need to go in between the street and kill a man to take money. I can live with my two arms and live well....
“Now, I should say that I am not only innocent of all these things, not only have I never committed a real crime in all my life—though some sins but not crimes—not only have I struggled all my life to eliminate crimes, the crimes that the official law and the official moral condemns, but also the crime that the official moral and the official law sanctions and sanctifies—the exploitation and the oppression of the man by the man, and if there is a reason why I am here as a guilty man, if there is a reason why you in a few minutes can doom me, it is this reason and none else.”