Mr. Hallett accordingly entered a nolle prosequi in all the other cases, and the whole affair was quashed.[3]
DEFENCE.
May it please the Court:
Gentlemen of the Jury.—It is no trifling matter which comes before you this day. You may hereafter decide on millions of money, and on the lives of your fellow men; but it is not likely that a question of this magnitude will ever twice be brought before the same jurymen. Opportunities to extend a far-reaching and ghastly wickedness, or to do great service for mankind, come but seldom in any man's life. Your verdict concerns all the people of the United States; its influence will reach to ages far remote, blessing or cursing whole generations not yet born. The affair is national in its width of reach,—its consequences of immense duration.
In addressing you, Gentlemen, my language will be more didactic than rhetorical, more like a lecture, less like a speech; for I am not a lawyer but a minister, and do not aim to carry a Measure, which with you will go of its own accord, so much as to set forth a Principle that will make such prosecutions as impossible hereafter, as a conviction now is to-day.
Gentlemen, I address you provisionally, as Representatives of the People. To them, my words are ultimately addressed,—to the People of the Free States of America. I must examine many things minutely, not often touched upon in courts like this. For mine is a Political Trial; I shall treat it accordingly. I am charged with no immoral act—with none even of selfish ambition. It is not pretended that I have done a deed, or spoken a word, in the heat of passion, or vengeance, or with calculated covetousness, to bring money, office, or honor, to myself or any friend. I am not suspected of wishing to do harm to man or woman; or with disturbing any man's natural rights. Nay, I am not even charged with such an offence. The Attorney and the two Judges are of one heart and mind in this prosecution; Mr. Hallett's "Indictment" is only the beast of burthen to carry to its own place Mr. Curtis's "Charge to the Grand-Jury," fit passenger for fitting carriage! The same tree bore the Judge's blossom in June, and the Attorney's fruit in October,—both reeking out the effluvia of the same substance. But neither Attorney nor Judge dares accuse me of ill-will which would harm another man, or of selfishness that seeks my own private advantage. No, Gentlemen of the Jury, I am on trial for my love of Justice; for my respect to the natural Rights of Man; for speaking a word in behalf of what the Declaration of Independence calls the "self-evident" Truth,—that all men have a natural, equal, and unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. I am charged with words against what John Wesley named, the "Sum of all Villanies," against a national crime so great, that it made freethinking Mr. Jefferson, with all his "French Infidelity," "tremble" when he remembered "that God is just." I am on trial for my manly virtue,—a Minister of the Christian Religion on trial for keeping the Golden Rule! It is alleged that I have spoken in Boston against kidnapping in Boston; that in my own pulpit, as a minister, I have denounced Boston men for stealing my own parishioners; that as a man, in Faneuil Hall, the spirit of James Otis, of John Hancock, and three Adams's about me, with a word I "obstructed" the Marshal of Boston and a Boston Judge of Probate, in their confederated attempts to enslave a Boston man. When the Government of the United States has turned kidnapper, I am charged with the "misdemeanor" of appealing from the Atheism of purchased officials to the Conscience of the People; and with rousing up Christians to keep the golden rule, when the Rulers declared Religion had nothing to do with politics and there was no Law of God above the fugitive slave bill!
Such are the acts charged. Gentlemen of the Jury, you are summoned here to declare them a Crime, and then to punish me for this "offence!" You are the Axe which the Government grasps with red hand to cleave my head asunder. It is a trial where Franklin Pierce, transiently President of the United States, and his official coadjutors,—Mr. Caleb Cushing, Mr. Benj. R. Curtis, and Mr. Benj. F. Hallett,—are on one side, and the People of the United States on the other. As a Measure, your decision may send me to jail for twelve months; may also fine me three hundred dollars. To me personally it is of very small consequence what your verdict shall be. The fine is nothing; the imprisonment for twelve months—Gentlemen, I laugh at it! Nay, were it death, I should smile at the official gibbet. A verdict of guilty would affix no stain to my reputation. I am sure to come out of this trial with honor—it is the Court that is sure to suffer loss—at least shame. I do not mean the Court will ever feel remorse, or even shame, for this conduct; I am no young man now, I know these men,—but the People are sure to burn the brand of shame deep into this tribunal. The blow of that axe, if not parried, will do me no harm.