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Elocution means an expert manner of speaking involving control of voice and gestu
re speech death penalty
Gentlemen of the Jury, if there is a culprit here, it is not my son,
it is mysel
f, it is I! I, who for these twenty-five years have opposed capital punishment,
have contented for the inviolability of human life, have committed this crime fo
r which my son is now arraigned. Here I denounce myself, Mr. Advocate General! I
have committed it under all aggravated circumstances deliberately, repeatedly,
and tenaciously. Yes, this old and absurd lextalionix
this law of blood for blood
I have combated all my life all my life, Gentlemen of the Jury! And while I have
breath, I will continue to combat it, by all my efforts as a writer, by all my
words and all my votes as a legislator! I declare it before the crucifix; before
that victim of the penalty of death, who sees and hears us; before that gibbet,
to which, two thousand years ago, for the eternal instruction of the generation
s the human law nailed the Divine!
In all that my son has written on the subject of capital punishment and for writ
ing and publishing that for which he is now on trial,
in all that he has written
, he has merely proclaimed the sentiments with which, from his infancy, I have i
nspired him.
Gentlemen, Jurors, the right to criticize a law, and to criticize it severely
es
pecially a penal is placed beside the duty of amelioration, like the torch besid
e the work under the artisan s hand. The right of the journalist is a sacred, as n
ecessary, as the right of the legislator.
What are the circumstances? A man, a convict, a sentenced wretch, is dragged, on
a certain morning, to one of our public squares. There he finds the scaffold! H
e shudders. He struggles. He refuses to die. The victim clings to the scaffold,
and shrieks for pardon. His clothes are torn,
his shoulders bloody still he resis
ts. They drag him forth, haggard, bloody, weeping, pleading howling for life calli
ng upon God, calling upon his father and mother, For like a very child had this
man become in the prospect of death
they drag him forth to execution. He is hois
ted on the scaffold, and his head falls!
And then through every conscience runs a shoulder. Never had legal murder appear
ed with an aspect so indecent, so abominable. All feel jointly implicated in the
deed it is at this very moment that from a young man s breast escapes a cry, wrung
from his very heart a cry of pity and anguish a cry of horror a cry of humanity. A
nd this cry would punish! And in the face of the appalling facts which I have na
rrated, you would say to the guillotine, Thou art right! and to Pity, saintly Pity
, Thou art wrong!
Gentlemen of the Jury, it cannot be! Gentlemen, I have finished.