Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog

If you sow tares, can you reap wheat? If you sow hate can you reap love? If you sow wrong can you reap right? If you teach and practise knavery, can you ask for purity and virtue?

The laws were made by ignorant and dishonest men, they are administered by men ignorant and selfish; they are dishonest laws; good for neither rich nor poor; evil in their conception, evil in their enforcement, evil in their results.

There need not be any such things as poverty and ignorance in the world. The earth is bounteous, and yields enough, and more than enough, for all.

Men and women: I beg of you to do all that is in your power to change the unjust laws, and the uncharitable and unreasonable opinions, which make the deadly environment that fosters vice and crime.

For, besides that the laws are unjust, that the teachings of our superior persons are untrue, that blame and punishment must fail as they have always failed, there is the awful waste– the waste of life, and love, of beauty and power that the present cruel system entails.

Think of the loveliness of a good woman, the blessing of her; think of the sweetness and the joy of an innocent child, of the value and nobility of an honest man. Picture to yourself the kind of woman you would wish your daughter to be, the kind of man you would wish your son to be. Then remember what good or bad environment can make of the young.

I tell you there is hardly a battered drab, a broken pauper, a hardened thief, a hopeless drunkard, a lurking tramp, a hooligan, but who might have been an honest and a useful citizen under fair conditions.

Good women: if ever you felt the thrill of a dear child's fingers on your throat or breast, think what millions of such children in our cities must become.

Good men: if you honour womanhood, if you love your daughters and your wives, think of the women and the girls in the streets, in the fields, in the factories, and in the jails, and then look into your mirrors for a friend to save them.

Men and women: as the little children are now the ruffian and the harlot once were; as the ruffian and the harlot are now millions of helpless children must become unless you give them sympathy and aid.

It is no use looking for help to heaven: we must look upon the earth. It is no use asking God to help us: we must help ourselves.

My friends: for the sake of good men, who are better than their gods; for the sake of good women, who are the pride and glory of the world; for the sake of the dear children, who are sweeter to us than the sunshine or the flowers; for the sake of the generation not yet spoiled or lost; for the sake of the nations yet unborn; in the names of justice, of reason and truth, I ask you for a verdict of Not Guilty.