The design of the Government was evidently to crush at once, and arbitrarily, all efforts of women for equality of rights with men. The principles of law and justice involved did not, however, apply to women alone, but to all persons alike. Where the rights of the most insignificant or humble are outraged those of all are endangered. The decisions in these cases are the more remarkable since they were based on the most ultra State Rights doctrine, and yet were rendered in every instance by members of the Republican party which held its position by reason of its recent success against the extreme demands of State sovereignty. The right of women to vote under national protection was but the logical result of the political guarantees of the war, and Republican leaders should have been anxious to clinch their war record by legislative and judicial decisions.
But a more thorough recognition of the State Rights theory never was presented than in the proceedings of this Judge of the Supreme Court in his verdict against Miss Anthony, nor a more absolute exhibition of National power in State affairs than his decision in the case of the Inspectors, who were State officers, working under State authority and State laws, and not under authority derived from the Constitution of the United States, but who were tried by an United States judge, and punished for what was held as a crime against the State of New York—a monstrous usurpation of National authority! Each of these trials was, in its way, an example of authority overriding law, and an evidence of the danger to the liberties of the people from a practically irresponsible judiciary. Men need to feel their indebtedness and their responsibility to those who place them in position; first, in order to preserve them from despotism; and, second, that they may be removed when infirmity demands the substitution of a competent person in their place.
Although for a period little has been said in regard to the usurpations of the judiciary, a time will come in the history of the country when the course of Justice Hunt will be recalled as a dangerous precedent.
It was more than a year after Miss Anthony's trial was completed before her case received notice in the chief legal journal of the State of New York. At that time, in an article entitled, "Can a Judge Direct a Verdict of Guilty?"[173] Judge Hunt's course in refusing to poll the jury was reviewed and condemned as contrary to justice and law. To Mrs. Gage's review of this article, the Law Journal said, "If Mrs. Gage and Miss Anthony are not pleased with our laws, they had better emigrate." This would make real, in case of woman, Edward Everett Hale's story of the "Man Without a Country." Women are, by this advice, assumed to have no country; to be living in the United States upon sufferance, a species of useful aliens, which possesses no rights that man is bound to respect, which are not to be permitted to vote, nor even to protest when the dearest rights are trampled upon. While admitting that Justice Hunt usurped power in taking the case from the jury, the Albany Law Journal expressed a desire that it should have gone to the jury, not on the ground of legal right, but on the ground that the jury would have brought in a verdict of guilty.
But had the case been allowed to go to the jury, no verdict of guilty would have been rendered. The jury did not believe the defendant guilty, but they were not permitted to give their opinion. Their opinions counted for nothing; they were wronged as well as Miss Anthony.
It was said of the infamous Lord Jeffries, that when pre-determined upon a conviction he always wore a red cap. In such cases juries were useless appendages to his court. Justice Hunt, through this trial, wore an invisible red cap which only came into view at its close.
The effect of Miss Anthony's prosecution, conviction, and sentence, was in many ways advantageous to the cause of freedom. Her trial served to awaken thought, promote discussion, and compel an investigation of the principles of government. The argument of Judge Selden, clearly proving woman's constitutional right to vote, published[174] in all the leading papers, arrested the attention of legal minds as no popular discussions had done.
Thus the question of the abstract rights of each individual, their civil and political rights under State and National Constitutions, were widely discussed. And when the verdict, contrary to law, was rendered by the Judge, and the jury dismissed without having been permitted to utter a word, the whole question of woman's rights and wrongs was brought into new prominence through this infringement of the sacred right of jury trial.
A nolle prosequi was entered for the women who voted with Miss Anthony. Immediately after the decision in her case, the trial of the Inspectors took place before the same court. This was in reality a continuation of the same question—a citizen's right to vote—and like that of Miss Anthony's was a legal farce, the decision in this case evidently having also been pre-determined. The indictment stated that:
Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, Inspectors of Election in and for said first election district of said eight ward of said city of Rochester, etc., did then and there knowingly and willfully register as a voter of said District, one Susan B. Anthony, she, said Susan B. Anthony, then and there not being entitled to be registered as a voter of said District in that she, said Susan B. Anthony was then and there a person of the female sex, contrary to the form of the statute of the United States of America in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the United States of America and their dignity.