in the state prison, and not having been pardoned; the conviction having by law deprived him of citizenship and right to vote, unless pardoned and restored to citizenship.  The case came up before the General Term of the Supreme Court, on writ of error.  It appeared that on the trial evidence was offered, that before the prisoner was discharged from the state prison, he and his father applied to the Governor for a pardon, and that the Governor replied in writing, that on the ground of the prisoner’s being a minor at the time of his discharge from prison, a pardon would not be necessary, and that he would be entitled to all the rights of a citizen on his coming of age.  They also applied to two respectable counsellors of the Supreme Court, and they confirmed the Governor’s opinion.  All this evidence was rejected.  It appeared that the prisoner was seventeen years old when convicted of the felony, and was nineteen when discharged from prison.  The rejection of the evidence was approved by the Supreme Court on the ground that the prisoner was bound to know the law, and was presumed to do so, and his conviction was accordingly confirmed.

Here a young man, innocent so far as his conduct in this case was involved, was condemned, for acting in good faith upon the advice, (mistaken advice it may be conceded,) of one governor and two lawyers to whom he applied for information as to his rights; and this condemnation has proceeded upon the assumed ground, conceded to be false in fact, that he knew the advice given to him was wrong.  On this judicial fiction the young man, in the name of justice, is sent to prison, punished for a mere mistake, and a mistake made in pursuance of such advice.  It cannot be, consistently with the radical principles of criminal law to which I have referred, and the numerous authorities which I have quoted, that this man was guilty of a crime, that his mistake was a crime, and I think the judges who pronounced his condemnation, upon their own principles, better than their victim, deserved the punishment which they inflicted.

The condemnation of Miss Anthony, her good faith being conceded, would do no less violence to any fair administration of justice.

One other matter will close what I have to say.  Miss Anthony believed, and was advised that she had a right to vote.  She may also have been advised, as was clearly the fact, that the question as to her right could not be brought before the courts for trial, without her voting or offering to vote, and if either was criminal, the one was as much so as the other.  Therefore she stands, now arraigned as a criminal, for taking the only steps by which it was possible to bring the great constitutional question as to her right, before the tribunals of the country for adjudication.  If for thus acting, in the most perfect good faith, with motives as pure and impulses as noble as any which can find place in your honor’s breast in the administration of justice, she is by the laws of her country to be condemned as a criminal, she must abide the consequences.  Her condemnation, however, under such circumstances, would only add another most weighty reason to those which I have already advanced, to show that women need the aid of the ballot for their protection.