for this to stop. When will it stop? In the sermon on the mount Christ said: "What man is there of you who, if his son shall ask him for bread, will give him a stone, or if he shall ask for fish will give him a serpent? All thins, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." It was, however, reserved for the close of the nineteenth century, of the Christian era, in the city of Chicago, and by the editor and proprietor of the Chicago Tribune, to permit to be said, unrebuked, in his paper: "When a tramp"—an unemployed and starving laboring man—"asks you for bread put strychnine or arsenic on it and he will not trouble you any more, and others will keep out of the neighborhood." I suppose, your honor, this was said by a law-and-order pharisee.
This verdict, as it now stands, proclaims to the world that he who throws a bomb and kills a score of people is safe, while he who speaks or writes or works to organize labor and peaceably remove—because I deny the charge of any organization to attack anybody; the proof does not show it, nor sustain it, nor maintain it—to peaceably remove the cause of the people's discontent is in danger of dungeons and of the scaffold.
Every man called upon to act upon the jury, swore that he was an enemy to the labor movement, was prejudiced against the idea of Socialism or free labor. Not satisfied with such a jury, the enemies of free rights resorted to perjury and other inhuman acts to bring about a conviction. A few days ago, in an interview in the New York World and copied in the Chicago papers, Mayor Harrison said: "Right here I would like to say there has been the heartiest co-operation between Mr. Grinnell and myself from first to last, for without me he would never have been able to get certain evidence to obtain which I did that which, if it had been done in the city of London, would upset the throne of Victoria; that which could be done in no monarchical country with safety was done here; because in full sympathy with the people as a servant of the people I did precisely what I knew the people wanted done and would sustain, something which, if wrong, they could easily rectify." Now, your honor, there were wrongs done here. The mayor says so. You can rectify them. Suspend your sentence. Give us a chance in a new trial. Now, here is the officer highest in the city, who frankly admits that he employed unlawful means in order to arrest us, because the people wanted him to do it. Has this court, has the State's attorney and the police done the same thing in order to convict us? Mayor Harrison refers to the arrest of persons, the seizure of property, the searches of homes and places of business without warrant, and in admitted disregard of constitutional and legal guarantees of personal liberty and right, which was done by the city police immediately after the meeting of May 4, 1886. As proof of what he said, there followed that night in this city an era of official lawlessness in these respects, which according to Mayor Harrison, would not have been tolerated in any other civilized country in the world, and which if done in the city of London would have upset the throne of Victoria, and which the mayor said could not have been done in any monarchical country with safety. The mayor's confession is charmingly frank, and is significant. Is it then true that in this land, which boasts of its liberty, private right can be more safely disregarded in obedience to public clamor than in any other civilized country? Is it true that the ruling, the
