The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 13

_Question_. You do not seem to think that Arthur has a chance?

_Answer_. No Vice-President was ever made President by the people.

It is natural to resent the accident that gave the Vice-President the place. They regard the Vice-President as children do a stepmother. He is looked upon as temporary--a device to save the election--a something to stop a gap--a lighter--a political raft.

He holds the horse until another rider is found. People do not wish death to suggest nominees for the presidency. I do not believe it will be possible for Mr. Arthur, no matter how well he acts, to overcome this feeling. The people like a new man. There is some excitement in the campaign, and besides they can have the luxury of believing that the new man is a great man.

_Question_. Do you not think Arthur has grown and is a greater man than when he was elected?

_Answer_. Arthur was placed in very trying circ.u.mstances, and, I think, behaved with great discretion. But he was Vice-President, and that is a vice that people will not pardon.

_Question_. How do you regard the situation in Ohio?

_Answer_. I hear that the Republicans are attacking Hoadly, saying that he is an Infidel. I know nothing about Mr. Hoadly's theological sentiments, but he certainly has the right to have and express his own views. If the Republicans of Ohio have made up their minds to disfranchise the Liberals, the sooner they are beaten the better.

Why should the Republican party be so particular about religious belief? Was Lincoln an orthodox Christian? Were the founders of the party--the men who gave it heart and brain--conspicuous for piety? Were the abolitionists all believers in the inspiration of the Bible? Is Judge Hoadly to be attacked because he exercises the liberty that he gives to others? Has not the Republican party trouble enough with the spirituous to let the spiritual alone? If the religious issue is made, I hope that the party making it will be defeated. I know nothing about the effect of the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio. It is a very curious decision and seems to avoid the Const.i.tution with neatness and despatch. The decision seems to rest on the difference between the words tax and license--_I. e._, between allowing a man to sell whiskey for a tax of one hundred dollars or giving him a license to sell whiskey and charging him one hundred dollars. In this, the difference is in the law instead of the money. So far all the prohibitory legislation on the liquor question has been a failure. Beer is victorious, and Gambrinus now has Olympus all to himself. On his side is the "bail"--

_Question_. But who will win?

_Answer_. The present indications are favorable to Judge Hoadly.

It is an off year. The Ohio leaders on one side are not in perfect harmony. The Germans are afraid, and they generally vote the Democratic ticket when in doubt. The effort to enforce the Sunday law, to close the gardens, to make one day in the week desolate and doleful, will give the Republicans a great deal of hard work.

_Question_. How about Illinois?

_Answer_. Republican always. The Supreme Court of Illinois has just made a good decision. That Court decided that a contract made on Sunday can be enforced. In other words, that Sunday is not holy enough to sanctify fraud. You can rely on a State with a Court like that. There is very little rivalry in Illinois. I think that General Oglesby will be the next Governor. He is one of the best men in that State or any other.

_Question_. What about Indiana?

_Answer_. In that State I think General Gresham is the coming man.

He was a brave soldier, an able, honest judge, and he will fill with honor any position he may be placed in. He is an excellent lawyer, and has as much will as was ever put in one man. McDonald is the most available man for the Democrats. He is safe and in every respect reliable. He is without doubt the most popular man in his party.

_Question_. Well, Colonel, what are you up to?

_Answer_. Nothing. I am surrounded by sand, sea and sky. I listen to music, bathe in the surf and enjoy myself. I am wondering why people take interest in politics; why anybody cares about anything; why everybody is not contented; why people want to climb the greased pole of office and then dodge the brickbats of enemies and rivals; why any man wishes to be President, or a member of Congress, or in the Cabinet, or do anything except to live with the ones he loves, and enjoy twenty-four hours every day. I wonder why all New York does not come to Long Beach and hear Schreiner's Band play the music of Wagner, the greatest of all composers. Finally, in the language of Walt Whitman, "I loaf and invite my soul."

--_The Herald_, New York, July 1, 1883.

THE INTERVIEWER.

_Question_. What do you think of newspaper interviewing?

_Answer_. I believe that James Redpath claims to have invented the "interview." This system opens all doors, does away with political pretence, batters down the fortifications of dignity and official importance, pulls masks from solemn faces, compels everybody to show his hand. The interviewer seems to be omnipresent. He is the next man after the accident. If a man should be blown up he would likely fall on an interviewer. He is the universal interrogation point. He asks questions for a living. If the interviewer is fair and honest he is useful, if the other way, he is still interesting.

On the whole, I regard the interviewer as an exceedingly important person. But whether he is good or bad, he has come to stay. He will interview us until we die, and then ask the "friends" a few questions just to round the subject off.

_Question_. What do you think of the tendency of newspapers is at present?

_Answer_. The papers of the future, I think, will be "news" papers.

The editorial is getting shorter and shorter. The paragraphist is taking the place of the heavy man. People rather form their own opinions from the facts. Of course good articles will always find readers, but the dreary, doleful, philosophical dissertation has had its day. The magazines will fall heir to such articles; then religious weeklies will take them up, and then they will cease altogether.

_Question_. Do you think the people lead the newspapers, or do the newspapers lead them?

_Answer_. The papers lead and are led. Most papers have for sale what people want to buy. As a rule the people who buy determine the character of the thing sold. The reading public grow more discriminating every year, and, as a result, are less and less "led." Violent papers--those that most freely attack private character--are becoming less hurtful, because they are losing their own reputations. Evil tends to correct itself. People do not believe all they read, and there is a growing tendency to wait and hear from the other side.

_Question_. Do newspapers to-day exercise as much influence as they did twenty-five years ago?

_Answer_. More, by the facts published, and less, by editorials.

As we become more civilized we are governed less by persons and more by principles--less by faith and more by fact. The best of all leaders is the man who teaches people to lead themselves.

_Question_. What would you define public opinion to be?

_Answer_. First, in the widest sense, the opinion of the majority, including all kinds of people. Second, in a narrower sense, the opinion of the majority of the intellectual. Third, in actual practice, the opinion of those who make the most noise. Fourth, public opinion is generally a mistake, which history records and posterity repeats.

_Question_. What do you regard as the result of your lectures?

_Answer_. In the last fifteen years I have delivered several hundred lectures. The world is growing more and more liberal every day. The man who is now considered orthodox, a few years ago would have been denounced as an Infidel. People are thinking more and believing less. The pulpit is losing influence. In the light of modern discovery the creeds are growing laughable. A theologian is an intellectual mummy, and excites attention only as a curiosity.

Supernatural religion has outlived its usefulness. The miracles and wonders of the ancients will soon occupy the same tent. Jonah and Jack the Giant Killer, Joshua and Red Riding Hood, Noah and Neptune, will all go into the collection of the famous Mother Hubbard.

--_The Morning Journal_, New York, July 3, 1883.

POLITICS AND PROHIBITION.

_Question_. What do you think of the result in Ohio?

_Answer_. In Ohio prohibition did more harm to the Republican chances than anything else. The Germans hold the Republicans responsible. The German people believe in personal liberty. They came to America to get it, and they regard any interference in the manner or quant.i.ty of their food and drink as an invasion of personal rights. They claim they are not questions to be regulated by law, and I agree with them. I believe that people will finally learn to use spirits temperately and without abuse, but teetotalism is intemperance in itself, which breeds resistance, and without destroying the rivulet of the appet.i.te only dams it and makes it liable to break out at any moment. You can prevent a man from stealing by tying his hands behind him, but you cannot make him honest. Prohibition breeds too many spies and informers, and makes neighbors afraid of each other. It kills hospitality. Again, the Republican party in Ohio is endeavoring to have Sunday sanctified by the Legislature. The working people want freedom on Sunday.

They wish to enjoy themselves, and all laws now making to prevent innocent amus.e.m.e.nt, beget a spirit of resentment among the common people. I feel like resenting all such laws, and unless the Republican party reforms in that particular, it ought to be defeated.

I regard those two things as the princ.i.p.al causes of the Republican party's defeat in Ohio.

_Question_. Do you believe that the Democratic success was due to the possession of reverse principles?

_Answer_. I do not think that the Democratic party is in favor of liberty of thought and action in these two regards, from principle, but rather from policy. Finding the course pursued by the Republicans unpopular, they adopted the opposite mode, and their success is a proof of the truth of what I contend. One great trouble in the Republican party is bigotry. The pulpit is always trying to take charge. The same thing exists in the Democratic party to a less degree. The great trouble here is that its worst element--Catholicism --is endeavoring to get control.

_Question_. What causes operated for the Republican success in Iowa?

_Answer_. Iowa is a prohibition State and almost any law on earth as against anything to drink, can be carried there. There are no large cities in the State and it is much easier to govern, but even there the prohibition law is bound to be a failure. It will breed deceit and hypocrisy, and in the long run the influence will be bad.

_Question_. Will these two considerations cut any figure in the presidential campaign of 1884?

_Answer_. The party, as a party, will have nothing to do with these questions. These matters are local. Whether the Republicans are successful will depend more upon the country's prosperity. If things should be generally in pretty good shape in 1884, the people will allow the party to remain in power. Changes of administration depend a great deal on the feeling of the country. If crops are bad and money is tight, the people blame the administration, whether it is responsible or not. If a s.h.i.+p going down the river strikes a snag, or encounters a storm, a cry goes up against the captain.

It may not have been his fault, but he is blamed, all the same, and the pa.s.sengers at once clamor for another captain. So it is in politics.

If nothing interferes between this and 1884, the Republican party will continue. Otherwise it will be otherwise. But the principle of prosperity as applied to administrative change is strong. If the panic of 1873 had occurred in 1876 there would have been no occasion for a commission to sit on Tilden. If it had struck us in 1880, Hanc.o.c.k would have been elected. Neither result would have its occasion in the superiority of the Democratic party, but in the belief that the Republican party was in some vague way blamable for the condition of things, and there should be a change.

The Republican party is not as strong as it used to be. The old leaders have dropped out and no persons have yet taken their places.

Blaine has dropped out, and is now writing a book. Conkling dropped out and is now practicing law, and so I might go on enumerating leaders who have severed their connection with the party and are no longer identified with it.

_Question_. What is your opinion regarding the Republican nomination for President?