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An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting by Anonymous
page 92 of 270 (34%)
the offence, and one on which the jury were not only entitled to
exercise, but were in duty bound to exercise, their independent
judgment. That question of fact was, whether the defendant, at the time
when she voted, knew that she had not a right to vote. The statute makes
this knowledge the very gist of the offence, without the existence of
which, in the mind of the voter, at the time of voting, there is no
crime. There is none by the statute and none in morals. The existence of
this knowledge, in the mind of the voter, at the time of voting, is
under the statute, necessarily a fact and nothing but a fact, and one
which the jury was bound to find as a fact, before they could, without
violating the statute, find the defendant guilty. The ruling which took
that question away from the jury, on the ground that it was a question
of law and not of fact, and which declared that as a question of law,
the knowledge existed, was, I respectfully submit, a most palpable
error, both in law and justice. It was an error in law, because its
effect was to deny any force whatever to the most important word which
the statute uses in defining the offense--the word "knowingly." It was
also unjust, because it makes the law declare a known falsehood as a
truth, and then by force of that judicial falsehood condemns the
defendant to such punishment as she could only lawfully be subject to,
if the falsehood were a truth.

I admit that it is an established legal maxim that every person
(judicial officers excepted) is bound, and must be presumed, to know the
law. The soundness of this maxim, in all the cases to which it can
properly be applied, I have no desire to question; but it has no
applicability whatever to this case. It applies in every case where a
party does an act which the law pronounces criminal, whether the party
knows or does not know that the law has made the act a crime. That maxim
would have applied to this case, if the defendant had voted, knowing
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