SUFFRAGETTE TRIAL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 19 June 1913, Page 5

SUFFRAGETTE TRIAL.

fl* CABLE—PBBSS ASSOCIATION—COPyBIGHr LONDON, June 18. Miss Ke.'iuy, addressing the jury, referred to the Ulster discovery of rifles, and added that had women said "rifles ior women; women will fignc with rifles," the Government would have been justified in prosecuting them. She would rebel until the Government gave he/ a vote. She would rebel against an abominable system—economic, industrial, and political— under which women'lived. If, like Miss Davison, she must die to get a vote, she would do so. whatever the verdict. The Solicitor-General replied that defendants were prosecuted not for their opinions, but for-flagrant breaches of the criminal law in pursuit of objects perfectly legitimate in themselves. Justice Phillimore, summing up, said that_ this was one of the saddest trials in his eyperience. It had been urged ' that great causes Mere never won without breaknig the law. Possibly this' was true in some cases, and if every recorded act of anarchy was used to justify further acts of anarchy • the iinaii race would soon reach a position of absoulte savagery. The case had been treated as a case of one sex < against the other. He imagined that the jury would find that it was not women against men, but some women against all other women and children, and some men against all other men. The jury were fifty-seven minutes absent. Mr Justice Phillimore, in passing sentence ot eighteen months, said that he j believed that some suffragists were a_tuated partly by ambition and pride! and love of power, and others, young people chiefly, from a spirit of mischief. Others mdae it a matter of pay, Many had a sincere belief that they were forwarding a good object. MRS. PANKHTJRST'S CONDITION. LONDON, Juno -18. Mrs Pankhurst's condition is critical.