The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IV Part 36

And it was declared at that time that anyone who believed either more or less on that subject than that book contained was a heretic and deserved to be exterminated from the face of the earth. This was authority until the discovery of America by Columbus. Cosmas said the earth was flat; if it was round how could men on the other side at the day of judgment see the coming of the Lord? At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what I have, to show you the productions of the mind when enslaved--the consequences of abandoning judgment and reason--the effects of wide spread ignorance and universal bigotry.

I want to convince you that every wrong is a viper that will sooner or later strike with poisoned fangs the bosom that nourishes it. You will ask what has produced this wonderful change in only three hundred years. You will remember that in those days it was said that all ghosts vanished at the dawn of day; that the sprites, the spooks, the hobgoblins and all the monsters of the imagination fled from the approaching sun. In 1441, printing was invented. In the next century it became a power, and it has been flooding the world with light from that time to this. The Press has been the true Prometheus.

It has been, so to speak, the trumpet blown by the Gabriel of Progress, until, from the graves of ignorance and superst.i.tion, the people have leaped to grand and glorious life, spurning with swift feet the dust of an infamous past.

When people read, they reason, when they reason they progress. You must not think that the enemies of progress allowed books to be published or read when they had the power to prevent it. The whole power of the church, of the government, was arrayed upon the side of ignorance.

People found in the possession of books were often executed. Printing, reading and writing were crimes. Anathemas were hurled from the Vatican against all who dared to publish a word in favor of liberty or the sacred rights of man. The Inquisition was founded on purpose to crush out every n.o.ble aspiration of the heart. It was a war of darkness against light, of slavery against liberty, of superst.i.tion against reason. I shall not attempt to recount the horrors and tortures of the Inquisition. Suffice it to say that they were equal to the most terrible and vivid pictures even of h.e.l.l, and the Inquisitors were even more horrid fiends than even a real Perdition could boast. But in spite of priests, in spite of kings, in spite of mitres, in spite of crowns, in spite of Cardinals and Popes, books were published and books were read.

Beam after beam of light penetrated the darkness. Star after star arose in the firmament of ignorance. The morning of Freedom began to dawn.

Driven to madness by the prospect of ultimate defeat, the enemies of light persecuted with redoubled fury.

People were burned for saying that the earth was round, for saying that the sun was the center of a system. A woman was executed because she endeavored to allay the pains of a fever by singing. The very name of Philosopher became a t.i.tle of proscription, and the slightest offences were punished by death. About the beginning of the sixteenth century Luther and Jerome, of Prague, inaugurated the great Reformation in Germany, Ziska was at work in Hungary, Zwinglius in Switzerland. The grand work went forward in Denmark, in Sweden and in England. All this was accomplished as early as 1534. They unmasked the corruption and withstood the tyranny of the church.

With a zeal amounting to enthusiasm, with a courage that was heroic, with an energy that never flagged, a determination that brooked no opposition, with a firmness that defied torture and death, this sublime band of reformers sprang to the attack. Stronghold after stronghold was carried, and in a few short but terrible years, the banner of the Reformation waved in triumph over the b.l.o.o.d.y ensign of Saint Peter. The soul roused from the slumbers of a thousand years began to think. When slaves begin to reason, slavery begins to die. The invention of powder had released millions from the army, and left them to prosecute the arts of peace. Industry began to be remunerative and respectable.

Science began to unfold the wings that will finally fill the heavens.

Descartes announced to the world the sublime truth that the Universe is governed by law.

Commerce began to unfold her wings. People of different countries began to get acquainted. Christians found that Mohammedan gold was not the less valuable on account of the doctrines of its owners. Telescopes began to be pointed toward the stars. The Universe was getting immense.

The Earth was growing small. It was discovered that a man could be healthy without being a Catholic. Innumerable agencies were at work dispelling darkness and creating light. The supernatural began to be abandoned, and mankind endeavored to account for all physical phenomena by physical laws. The light of reason was irradiating the world, and from that light, as from the approach of the sun, the ghosts and spectres of superst.i.tion wrapped their sheets around their attenuated bodies and vanished into thin air. Other inventions rapidly followed. The wonderful power of steam was made known to the world by Watts and by Fulton.

Neptune was frightened from the sea. The locomotive was given to mankind by Stephenson; the telegraph by Franklin and Morse. The rush of the s.h.i.+p, the scream of the locomotive, and the electric flash have frightened the monsters of ignorance from the world, and have left nothing above us but the heaven's eternal blue, filled with glittering planets wheeling through immensity in accordance with _Law_. True religion is a subordination of the pa.s.sions and interests to the perceptions of the intellect. But when religion was considered the end of life instead of a means of happiness, it overshadowed all other interests and became the destroyer of mankind. It became a hydra-headed monster--a serpent reaching in terrible coils from the heavens and thrusting its thousand fangs into the bleeding, quivering hearts of men.

SLAVERY.

I HAVE endeavored thus far to show you some of the results produced by enslaving the human mind. I now call your attention to another terrible phase of this subject; the enslavement of the body. Slavery is a very ancient inst.i.tution, yes, about as ancient as robbery, theft and murder, and is based upon them all.

Springing from the same fountain, that a man is not the owner of his soul, is the doctrine that he is not the owner of his body. The two are always found together, supported by precisely the same arguments, and attended by the same infamous acts of cruelty. From the earliest time, slavery has existed in all countries, and among all people until recently. Pufendorf said that slavery was originally established by contract. Voltaire replied, "Show me the original contract, and if it is signed by the party that was to be a slave I will believe you." You will bear in mind that the slavery of which I am now speaking is white slavery.

Greeks enslaved one another as well as those captured in war. Coriola.n.u.s scrupled not to make slaves of his own countrymen captured in civil war.

Julius Caesar sold to the highest bidder at onetime fifty-three thousand prisoners of war all of whom were white. Hannibal exposed to sale thirty thousand captives at one time, all of whom were Roman citizens. In Rome, men were sold into bondage in order to pay their debts. In Germany, men often hazarded their freedom on the throwing of dice. The Barbary States held white Christians in slavery in this, the 19th century. There were white slaves in England as late as 1574. There were white slaves in Scotland until the end of the 18th century.

These Scotch slaves were colliers and salters. They were treated as real estate and pa.s.sed with a deed to the mines in which they worked.

It was also the law that no collier could work in any mine except the one to which he belonged. It was also the law that their children could follow no other occupation than that of their fathers. This slavery absolutely existed in Scotland until the beginning of the glorious 19th century.

Some of the Roman n.o.bles were the owners of as many as twenty thousand slaves.

The common people of France were in slavery for fourteen hundred years.

They were transferred with land, and women were often seen a.s.sisting cattle to pull the plough, and yet people have the impudence to say that black slavery is right, because the blacks have always been slaves in their own country. I answer, so have the whites until very recently. In the good old days when might was right and when kings and popes stood by the people, and protected the people, and talked about "holy oil and divine right," the world was filled with slaves. The traveler standing amid the ruins of ancient cities and empires, seeing on every side the fallen pillar and the prostrate wall, asks why did these cities fall, why did these empires crumble? And the Ghost of the Past, the wisdom of ages, answers: These temples, these palaces, these cities, the ruins of which you stand upon were built by tyranny and injustice. The hands that built them were unpaid. The backs that bore the burdens also bore the marks of the lash. They were built by slaves to satisfy the vanity and ambition of thieves and robbers. For these reasons they are dust.

Their civilization was a lie. Their laws merely regulated robbery and established theft. They bought and sold the bodies and souls of men, and the mournful winds of desolation, sighing amid their crumbling ruins, is a voice of prophetic warning to those who would repeat the infamous experiment. From the ruins of Babylon, of Carthage, of Athens, of Palmyra, of Thebes, of Rome, and across the great desert, over that sad and solemn sea of sand, from the land of the pyramids, over the fallen Sphinx and from the lips of Memnon the same voice, the same warning and uttering the great truth, that no nation founded upon slavery, either of body or mind, can stand.

And yet, to-day, there are thousands upon thousands endeavoring to build the temples and cities and to administer our Government upon the old plan. They are makers of brick without straw. They are bowing themselves beneath hods of untempered mortar. They are the babbling builders of another Babel, a Babel of mud upon a foundation of sand.

Nothwithstanding the experience of antiquity as to the terrible effects of slavery, bondage was the rule, and liberty the exception, during the Middle Ages not only, but for ages afterward.

The same causes that led to the liberation of mind also liberated the body. Free the mind, allow men to write and publish and read, and one by one the shackles will drop, broken, in the dust. This truth was always known, and for that reason slaves have never been allowed to read. It has always been a crime to teach a slave. The intelligent prefer death to slavery. Education is the most radical abolitionist in the world. To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate revolution. To build a schoolhouse is to construct a fort. Every library is an a.r.s.enal, and every truth is a monitor, iron-clad and steel-plated.

Do not think that white slavery was abolished without a struggle. The men who opposed white slavery were ridiculed, were persecuted, driven from their homes, mobbed, hanged, tortured and burned. They were denounced as having only one idea, by men who had none. They were called fanatics by men who were so insane as to suppose that the laws of a petty prince were greater than those of the Universe. Crime made faces at virtue, and honesty was an outcast beggar. In short, I cannot better describe to you the manner in which the friends of slavery acted at that time, than by saying that they acted precisely as they used to do in the United States. White slavery, established by kidnapping and piracy, sustained by torture and infinite cruelty, was defended to the very last.

Let me now call your attention to one of the most immediate causes of the abolition of white slavery in Europe. There were during the Middle Ages three great cla.s.ses of people: the common people, the clergy and the n.o.bility. All these people could, however, be divided into two cla.s.ses, namely, the robbed and the robbers. The feudal lords were jealous of the king, the king afraid of the lords, the clergy always siding with the stronger party. The common people had only to do the work, the fighting, and to pay the taxes, as by the law the property of the n.o.bles was exempt from taxation. The consequence was, in every war between the n.o.bles and the king, each party endeavored by conciliation to get the peasants upon their side. When the clergy were on the side of the king they created dissension between the people and the n.o.bles by telling them that the n.o.bles were tyrants. When they were on the side of the n.o.bles they told the people that the king was a tyrant. At last the people believed both, and the old adage was verified, that when thieves fall out honest men get their dues.

By virtue of the civil and religious wars of Europe, slavery was abolished, and the French Revolution, one of the grandest pages in all history, was, so to speak, the exterminator of white slavery. In that terrible period the people who had borne the yoke for fourteen hundred years, rising from the dust, casting their shackles from them, fiercely avenged their wrongs. A mob of twenty millions driven to desperation, in the sublimity of despair, in the sacred name of Liberty cried for vengeance. They reddened the earth with the blood of their masters.

They trampled beneath their feet the great army of human vermin that had lived upon their labor. They filled the air with the ruins of temples and thrones, and with b.l.o.o.d.y hands tore in pieces the altar upon which their rights had been offered by an impious church. They scorned the superst.i.tions of the past not only, but they scorned the past; for the past to them was only wrong, imposition and outrage. The French Revolution was the inauguration of a new era. The lava of freedom long buried beneath a mountain of wrong and injustice at last burst forth, overwhelming the Pompeii and Herculaneum of priestcraft and tyranny. As soon as white slavery began to decay in Europe, and while the condition of the white slaves was improving about the middle of the 16th century in 1541, Alonzo Gonzales, of Portugal, pointed out to his countrymen a new field of operations, a new market for human flesh, and in a short time the African slave-trade with all its unspeakable horrors was inaugurated.

This trade has been the great crime of modern times. It is almost impossible to conceive that nations who professed to be Christian, or even in any degree civilized, should have engaged in this infamous traffic. Yet nearly all of the nations of Europe engaged in the slave-trade, legalized it, protected it, fostered the practice, and vied with each other in acts, the bare recital of which is enough to make the heart stand still.

It has been calculated that for years, at least 400,000 Africans were either killed or enslaved annually. They crammed their s.h.i.+ps so full of these unfortunate wretches, that, as a general thing, about ten per cent, died of suffocation on the voyage. They were treated like wild beasts. In times of danger they were thrown into the sea. Remember that this horrible traffic commenced in the middle of the 16th century, was carried on by nations pretending to Christian civilization, and when do you think it was abolished by some of the princ.i.p.al countries? In England, Wilberforce and Clarkson dedicated their lives to the abolition of the slave-trade. They were hated and despised. They persevered for twenty years, and it was not until the 25th of March, 1808, that England p.r.o.nounced the infamous traffic in human flesh illegal, and the rejoicing in England was redoubled on receiving the news that the United States had done the same thing. After a time, those engaged in the slave-trade were declared pirates.

On the 28th day of August, 1833, England abolished slavery throughout the British Colonies, thus giving liberty to nearly one million slaves.

The United States was then the greatest slave-holding power in the civilized world.

We are all acquainted with the history of slavery in this country. We know that it corrupted our people, that it has drenched our land in fraternal blood, that it has clad our country in mourning for the loss of 300,000 of her bravest sons; that it carried us back to the darkest ages of the world, that it led us to the very brink of destruction, forced us to the shattered gates of eternal ruin, death and annihilation. But Liberty rising above party prejudice, Freedom lifting itself above all other considerations,

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,-- Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal suns.h.i.+ne settles on its head."

And on the 1st day of January, 1863, the grandest New Year that ever dawned upon this continent, in accordance with the will of the heroic North, by the sublime act of one whose name will be sacred through all the coming years, the justice so long delayed was accomplished, and four millions of slaves became chainless.

LIBERTY TRIUMPHED.

LIBERTY, that most sacred word, without which all other words are vain, without which, life is worse than death, and men are beasts! I never see the word Liberty without seeing a halo of glory around it. It is a word worthy of the lips of a G.o.d. Can you realize the fact that only a few years ago, the most shocking system of slavery--the most barbarous--existed in our country, and that you and I were bound by the laws of the United States to stand between a human being and his liberty? That we were absolutely compelled by law to hand back that human being to the lash and chain? That by our laws children were sold from the arms of mothers, wives sold from their husbands? That we executed our laws with the a.s.sistance of bloodhounds, owned and trained by human bloodhounds fiercer still, and that all this was not only upheld by politicians, but by the pretended ministers of Christ?

That the pulpit was in partners.h.i.+p with the auction block--that the bloodhound's bark was only an echo from many of the churches? And that this was all done under the sacred name of Liberty, by a republican government that was founded upon the sublime declaration that all men are equal? This all seems to me like a horrible dream, a nightmare of terror, a h.e.l.lish impossibility. And yet, with cheeks glowing and burning with shame, before the bar of history, we are forced to plead guilty to this terrible charge. We made a whip-ping-post of the cross of Christ. It is true that in a great degree we have atoned for this national crime. Our bravest and our best have been sacrificed. We have borne the b.l.o.o.d.y burden of war. The good and the true have been with us, and the women of the North have won glory imperishable. They robbed war of half its terrors. Not content with binding the wreath of victory upon the leader's brow, they bandaged the soldiers' wounds, they nerved the living, comforted the dying, and smiled upon the great victory through their tears.

They have consoled the hero's widow and are educating his orphans. They have erected a monument to enlightened charity to which time can add only grandeur. There is much, however, to be accomplished still. Slavery has been abolished, but Progress requires more. We are called upon to make this a free government in the broadest sense, to give liberty to all. Standing in the presence of all history, knowing the experience of mankind, knowing that the earth is covered with countless wrecks of cruel failures; appealed to by the great army of martyrs and heroes who have gone before; by the sacred dust filling innumerable graves; by the memory of our own n.o.ble dead; by all the suffering of the past; by all the hopes for the future; by all the glorious dead and the countless millions yet to be, I pray, I beseech, I implore the American people to lay the foundation of the Government upon the principles of eternal justice. I pray, I beseech, I implore them to take for the corner-stone, Universal Human Liberty--the stone which has been heretofore rejected by all the builders of nations. The Government will then stand, and the swelling dome of the temple will touch the stars.

CONCLUSION

I HAVE thus endeavored to show you some of the effects of slavery, and to prove to you that a step in order to be in the direction of progress must be in the direction of freedom; that slavery either of body or mind is barbarism and is practiced and defended only by infamous tyrants or their dupes. I have endeavored to point out some of the causes of the abolition of slavery, both of body and mind. There is one truth, however, that you must not forget, and that is, that every evil tends to correct and abolish itself. I believe, however, that the diffusion of knowledge, more than everything else combined, has ameliorated the condition of mankind. When there was no freedom of speech and no press, then every idea perished in the brain that gave it birth. One man could not profit by the thought of another. The experience of the past was in a great degree unknown. And this state of things produced the same effect in the mental world, that confining all the water to the springs would in the physical. Confine the water to the springs, the rivulets would cease to murmur, the rivers to flow, and the ocean itself would become a desert of sand. But with the invention of printing, ideas began to circulate, born of the busy brain of the million--little rivulets of facts running into rivers of information, and they all flowing into the great ocean of human knowledge.

This exchange of ideas, this comparison of thought, has given to each generation the advantage of all the past. This, more than all else, has enabled man to improve his condition. It is by this that from the log or piece of bark on which a naked savage floated, we have by successive improvements created a man-of-war carrying a hundred guns and miles of canvas. By these means we have changed a handful of sand into a telescope. In the hands of science a drop of water has become a giant, turning with swift and tireless arm the countless wheels. The sun has become an artist painting with s.h.i.+ning beams the very thoughts within our eyes. The elements have been taught to do our bidding, and the electric spark, freighted with human thought and love, defies distance, and devours time as it sweeps under all the waves of the sea.

These are some of the results of free thought and free labor. I have barely alluded to a few--where is improvement to stop? Science is only in its infancy. It has accomplished all this and is in its cradle still.

We are standing on the sh.o.r.e of an infinite ocean whose countless waves, freighted with blessings, are welcoming our adventurous feet. Progress has been written on every soul. The human race is advancing.

Forward, oh sublime army of progress, forward until law is justice, forward until ignorance is unknown, forward while there is a spiritual or temporal throne, forward until superst.i.tion is a forgotten dream, forward until the world is free, forward until human reason, clothed in the purple of authority, is king of kings.

WHAT IS RELIGION?

* This was Col. Ingersoll's last public address, delivered before the American Free Religious a.s.sociation, in the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston, June 2, 1899.

IT is a.s.serted that an infinite G.o.d created all things, governs all things, and that the creature should be obedient and thankful to the creator; that the creator demands certain things, and that the person who complies with these demands is religious. This kind of religion has been substantially universal.