THE SUFFRAGETTE TRIAL.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVII, Issue 143, 19 June 1913, Page 5

THE SUFFRAGETTE TRIAL.

KENNY'S ADDRESS TO THE JURY.

(Received June 19, 0.30 a.m.) .^ LONDON, June 18. Kenny, addressing the jury in the fsuffragette trial, referred, to the . Ulster discovery of rifles. She added that had the women said "Rifles tor women; the women will fight with !rifles" the Government would have been justified in prosecuting them. ■She would be a rebel until she got the vote—a rebel against the abominable system, economic, industrial and political," under which ..women lived. If, like Davison, she must die to get the vote she would ■ do so, whatever the jury's verdict. The Solicitor-General replied that the defendants were prosecuted, not for their opinions, but for flagrant "breaches of the criminal law in .pursuit of objects perfectly legitimate in themselves. Mr Justice Phillimore, }n summing up, said that this was one of the saddest trials in his experience. It had been urged that great causes were never won without "breaking the law. - Possibly this was true in some cases, but it was very untrue in others, and if every recorded act of anarchy . was used to justify .further acts of anarchy the human race would soon reach a position of absolute savagery. The case had been treated as a case or one sex against the other, but he imagined the jury would find it not women against men, but some women against all other women and children, and some men against all other men. The jury was 57 minutes absent.

Judge Phillimore, in passing sentence, said he believed some suffragists were actuated partly by ambitious pride and love of power, some who were young people chiefly from a spirit of mischief, come as a matter •of pay, and many by a sincere beliet that they were forwarding a good .object. ..