The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IX Part 12

Let it be settled that political services are a barrier to political preferment, and my word for it, machine politics will never be heard of again.

Yours truly,----

I do not believe in carrying civil service reform to the extent that you will not allow an officer to resign. I do not believe that that principle should be insisted upon to that degree that there would only be two ways left to get out of office--death or suicide. I believe, other things being equal, any party having any office within its gift will give that office to the man that really believes in the principles of that party, and who has worked to give those principles ultimate victory. That is human nature. The man that plows, the man that sows, and the man that cultivates, ought to be the man that reaps. But we have in this country a mult.i.tude of little places, a mult.i.tude of clerks.h.i.+ps in Was.h.i.+ngton; and the question is whether on the incoming of a new administration, these men shall all be turned out. In the first place, they are on starvation salaries, just barely enough to keep soul and body together, and respectability on the outside; and if there is a young man in this audience, I beg of him:

Never accept a clerks.h.i.+p from this Government. Do not live on a little salary; do not let your mind be narrowed; do not sell all the splendid possibilities of the future; do not learn to cringe and fawn and crawl.

I would rather have forty acres of land, with a log cabin on it and the woman I love in the cabin--with a little gra.s.sy winding path leading down to the spring where the water gurgles from the lips of earth whispering day and night to the white pebbles a perpetual poem--with holly-hocks growing at the corner of the house, and morning-glories blooming over the low latched door--with lattice work over the window so that the sunlight would fall checkered on the dimpled babe in the cradle, and birds--like songs with wings hovering in the summer air--than be the clerk of any government on earth.

Now, I say, let us lengthen the term of office--I do not care much how long--send a man to Congress at least for five years. And it would be a great blessing if there were not half as many of them sent.

We have too many legislators and too much legislation; too little about important matters, and too much about unimportant matters. Lengthen the term of office so that the man can turn his attention to something else when he gets in besides looking after his re-election. There is another defect we must remedy in our Const.i.tution, in my judgment, and that is as to the mode of electing a President. I believe it of the greatest importance that the Executive should be entirely independent of the legislative and judicial departments of the country. I do not believe that Congress should have the right to create a vacancy which it can fill. I do not believe that the Senate of the United States, or the lower house of Congress, by a simple objection, should have the right to deprive any State of its electoral vote. Our Const.i.tution now provides that the electors chosen in each State shall meet in their respective States upon a certain day and there cast their votes for President and Vice-President of the United States. They shall properly certify to the votes which are cast, and shall transmit lists of them, together with the proper certificates, to the Vice-President of the United States.

And it is then declared that upon a certain day in the presence of both houses of Congress, the Vice-President shall open the certificates and the votes shall then be counted. It does not exactly say who shall count these votes. It does not in so many words say the Vice-President shall do it, or may do it, or that both houses of Congress shall do it, or may do it, or that either house can prevent a count of the votes. It leaves us in the dark, and, to a certain degree, in blindness. I believe there is a way, and a very easy way, out of the entire trouble, and it is this: I do not care whether the electors first meet in their respective States or not, but I want the Const.i.tution so amended that the electors of all the States shall meet on a certain day in the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, and count the votes themselves; to allow that body to be the judge of who are electors, to allow it to choose a chairman, and to allow the person so chosen to declare who is the President, and who is the Vice-President of the United States. The Executive is then entirely free and independent of the legislative department of Government. The Executive is then entirely free from the judicial department, and I tell you, it is a public calamity to have the ermine of the Supreme Court of the United States touched or stained by a political suspicion. In my judgment, this country can never stand such a strain again as it has now.

Now, my friends, all these questions are upon us and they have to be settled. We cannot go on as we have been going. We cannot afford to live as we have lived--one section running against the other. We cannot go along that way. It must be settled, either peaceably or there must again be a resort to the boisterous sword of civil war.

The people of the South must stop trampling on the rights of the colored men. It must not be a crime in any State of this Union to be a lover of this country. I have seen it stated in several papers lately that it is the duty of each State to protect its own citizens. Well, I know that.

Suppose that the State does not do it; what then I say? Well, then, say these people, the Governor of the State has the right to call on the General Government for a.s.sistance. But suppose the Governor will not call for a.s.sistance, what then? Then, they tell us, the Legislature can do so by a joint resolution. But suppose the Legislature will not do it, what then? Then, say these people, it is a defect in the Const.i.tution.

In my judgment, that is the absurdest kind of secession. If the State of Illinois must protect me, if I have no right to call for the protection of the General Government, all I have to say is that my allegiance must belong to the Government that protects me. If Illinois protects me, and the General Government has not the power, then my first allegiance is due to Illinois; and should Illinois unsheathe the sword of civil war, I must stand by my State, if that doctrine is true. I say, my first allegiance is due to the General Government, and not to the State of Illinois, and if the State of Illinois goes out of the Union, I swear to you that I will not. What does the General Government propose to give me in exchange for my allegiance? The General Government has a right to take my property. The General Government has a right to take my body in its necessary defence. What does that Government propose to give in exchange for that right? Protection, or else our Government is a fraud.

Who has a right to call for the protection of the United States? I say, the citizen who needs it. Can our Government obtain information only through the official sources? Must our Government wait until the Government asks the proofs, while the State tramples upon the rights of the citizens? Must it wait until the Legislature calls for a.s.sistance to help it stop robbing and plundering citizens of the United States? Is that the doctrine and the idea of the Northern Democratic party? It is not mine. A Government that will not protect its citizens is a disgrace to humanity. A Government that waits until a Governor calls--a Government that cannot hear the cry of the meanest citizen under its flag when his rights are being trampled upon, even by citizens of a Southern State--has no right to exist.

It is the duty of the American citizen to see to it that every State has a Government, not only republican in form, but it is the duty of the United States to see to it that life, liberty and property are protected in each State. If they are not protected, it is the duty of the United States to protect them, if it takes all her military force both upon land and upon the sea. The people whose Government cannot always hear the faintest wail of the meanest man beneath its flag have no right to call themselves a nation. The flag that will not protect its protectors and defend its defenders is a rag that is not worth the air in which it waves.

How are we going to do it? Do it by kindness if you can; by conciliation if you can, but the Government is bound to try every way until it succeeds. Now, Rutherford B. Hayes was elected President. The Democracy will say, of course, that he never was elected, but that does not make any difference. He is President to-day, and all these things are about him to be settled.

What shall we do? What can we do? There are two Governors in South Carolina and two Legislatures and not one cent of taxes has been collected by either. A dual government would seem to be the most economical in the world. Now, the question for us to decide, the question to be decided by this administration is, how are we to ascertain which is the legal Government of the State, and what department of the Government has a right to ascertain that fact? Must it be left to Congress? Has the Senate alone the right to determine it?

Can it be left in any way to the Supreme Court, or shall the Executive decide it himself? I do not say that the Executive has the power to decide that question for himself. I do not say he has not, but I do not say he has. The question, so far as Louisiana and South Carolina are concerned--that question is now in the Senate of the United States.

Governor Kellogg is asking for admission as a Senator from the State of Louisiana, and the question is to be decided by the Senate first, whether he is ent.i.tled to his seat, and that question of course, rests upon the one fact--was the Legislature that elected him the legal Legislature of the State of Louisiana? It seems to me that when that question is pending in the Senate of the United States the President has not the right, or at least it would be improper for him to decide it on his own motion, and say this or that Government is the real and legal Government of the State of Louisiana. But some mode must be adopted, some way must be discovered to settle this question, and to settle it peacefully. We are an enlightened people. Force is the last thing that civilized men should resort to. As long as courts can be created, as long as courts of arbitration can be selected, as long as we can reason and think, and urge all the considerations of humanity upon each other, there should be no appeal to arms in the United States upon any question whatever. What should the President do? He could only spare twenty-five hundred men from the Indian war--that is the same army that has so long been trampling on the rights of the South, the same army that the Democratic Congress wished to reduce, and that army of twenty-five hundred men is all he has to spare to protect American citizens in the Southern States. Is there any sentiment in the North that would uphold the Executive in calling for volunteers? Is there any sentiment here that would respond to a call for twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand men? Is there any Congress to pa.s.s the necessary act to pay them if there was?

And so the President of the United States appreciated the situation, and the people of the South came to him and said, "We have had war enough, we have had trouble enough, our country languishes, we have no trade, our pockets are empty, something must be done for us, we are utterly and perfectly disgusted with the leaders.h.i.+p of the Democratic party of the North. Now, will you let us be your friends?" And he had the sense to say, "Yes." The President took the right hand of the North, and put it into the right hand of the South and said "Let us be friends. We parted at the cannon's mouth; we were divided by the edge of the glittering sword; we must become acquainted again. We are equals. We are all fellow-citizens. In a Government of the people, by the people and for the people, there shall not be an outcast cla.s.s, whether white or black. To this feast, every child of the Republic shall be invited and welcomed." It was a grand thing grandly done. If the President succeeds in his policy, it will be an immense compliment to his brain. If he fails, it will be an equal compliment to his heart. He has opened the door; he has advanced; he has extended his hand, he has broken the silence of hatred with the words of welcome. Actuated by this broad and catholic spirit he has selected his const.i.tutional advisors, and allow me to say right here, the President has the right to select his const.i.tutional advisors to suit himself, and the idea of men endeavoring to force themselves or others into the Cabinet of the President, against, as it were, his will, why I would as soon think of circulating a pet.i.tion to compel some woman to marry me.

He has gathered around him the men he considers the wisest and the best, and I say, let us give them a fair chance. I say, let us be honest with the President of the United States and his Cabinet, and give his policy a fair and honest chance. In order to show his good faith with the South he chose as a member of his Cabinet an ex-rebel from Tennessee.

I confess, when I heard of it I did not like it. It did not seem to be exactly what I had been making all this fuss about. But I thought I would be honest about it, and I went and called on Mr. Key, and really he begins already to look a good deal like a Republican. A real honest looking man. And then I said to myself that he had not done much more harm than as though he had been a Democrat at the North during those four years, and had cursed and swore instead of fought about it. And so I told him "I am glad you are appointed."

And I am. Give him a chance, and so far as the whole Cabinet is concerned--I have not the time to go over them one by one now, it is perfectly satisfactory to me. The President made up his mind that to appoint that man would be to say to the South: "I do not look upon you as pariahs in this Government. I look upon you as fellow-citizens; I want you to wipe forever the color line, or the Union line, from the records of this Government on account of what has been done heretofore."

What are you now? is the only question that should be asked. It was a strange thing for the President to appoint that man. It was an experiment. It is an experiment. It has not yet been decided, but I believe it will simply be a proof of the President's wisdom. I can stand that experiment taken in connection with the appointment of Frederick Dougla.s.s as Marshal of the District of Columbia. I was glad to see that man's appointment. He is a good, patient, stern man. He has been fighting for the liberty of his race, and at the same time for our liberty. This man has done something for the freedom of my race as well as his own. This is no time for war. War settles nothing except the mere question of strength. That is all war ever did settle. You cannot shoot ideas into a man with a musket, or with cannon into one of those old Bourbon Democrats of the North. You cannot let prejudices out of a man with a sword.

This is the time for reason, for discussion, for compromise. This is the time to repair, to rebuild, to preserve. War destroys. Peace creates.

War is decay and death. Peace is growth and life,--sunlight and air. War kills men. Peace maintains them. Artillery does not reason; it a.s.serts.

A bayonet has point enough, but no logic. When the sword is drawn, reason remains in the scabbard. It is not enough to win upon the field of battle, you must be victor within the realm of thought. There must be peace between the North and South some time; not a conquered peace, but a peace that conquers. The question is, can you and I forget the past?

Can we forget everything except the heroic sacrifices of the men who saved this Government? Can we say to the South, "Let us be brothers"?

Can we? I am willing to do it because, in the first place, it is right, and in the second place, it will pay if it can be carried out. We have fought and hated long enough. Our country is prostrate. Labor is in rags. Energy has empty hands. Industry has empty pockets. The wheels of the factory are still. In the safe of prudence money lies idle, locked by the key of fear. Confidence is what we need--confidence in each other; confidence in our inst.i.tutions; confidence in our form of government; in the great future; confidence in law, confidence in liberty, confidence in progress, and in the grand destiny of the Great Republic. Now, do not imagine that I think this policy will please every body. Of course there are men South and North who can never be conciliated. They are the Implacables in the South--the Bourbons in the North.

Nothing will ever satisfy them. The Implacables want to own negroes and whip them; the Bourbons never will be satisfied until they can help catch one. The Implacables with violent hands drive emigration from their sh.o.r.es. They are poisoning the springs and sources of prosperity.

They dine on hatred and sup on regret. They mourn over the lost cause and partake of the communion of revenge. They strike down the liberties of their fellow-citizens and refuse to enjoy their own. They remember nothing but wrongs, and they forget nothing but benefits. Their bosoms are filled with the serpents of hate. No one can compromise with them.

Nothing can change them. They must be left to the softening influence of time and death. The Bourbons are the allies of the Implacables. A Bourbon in the majority is an Implacable in the minority. An Implacable in the minority is a Bourbon. We do not appeal to, but from these men.

But there are in the South thousands of men who have accepted in good faith the results of the war; men who love and wish to preserve this nation, men tired of strife--men longing for a real Union based upon mutual respect and confidence. These men are willing that the colored man shall be free--willing that he shall vote, and vote for the Government of his choice--willing that his children shall be educated--willing that he shall have all the rights of an American citizen. These men are tired of the Implacables and disgusted with the Bourbons. These men wish to unite with the patriotic men of the North in the great work of reestablis.h.i.+ng a government of law. For my part, call me of what party you please, I am willing to join hands with these men, without regard to race, color or previous condition.

With a knowledge of our wants--with a clear perception of our difficulties, Rutherford B. Hayes became President.

Nations have been saved by the grandeur of one man. Above all things a President should be a patriot. Party at best is only a means--the good of the country, the happiness of the people, the only end.

Now, I appeal to you Democrats here--not a great many, I suppose--do not oppose this policy because you think it is going to increase the Republican strength. If it strengthens the Government, no matter whether it is Republican or Democratic, it is for the common good.

And you Republicans, you who have had all these feelings of patriotism and glory, I ask you to wait and let this experiment be tried. Do not prophesy failure for it and then work to fulfill the prophecy. Give the President a chance. I tell you to-night that he is as good a Republican as there is in the United States; and I tell you that if this policy is not responded to by the South, Rutherford B. Hayes will change it, just as soon and as often as is necessary to accomplish the end. The President has offered the Southern people the olive branch of peace, and so far as I am concerned, I implore both the Southern people and the Northern people to accept it. I extend to you each and all the olive branch of peace. Fellow-citizens of the South, I beseech you to take it.

By the memory of those who died for naught; by the charred remains of your remembered homes; by the ashes of your statesman dead; for the sake of your sons and your daughters and their fair children yet to be, I implore you to take it with loving and with loyal hands. It will cultivate your wasted fields. It will rebuild your towns and cities. It will fill your coffers with gold. It will educate your children. It will swell the sails of your commerce. It will cause the roses of joy to clamber and climb over the broken cannon of war. It will flood the cabins of the freedman with light, and clothe the weak in more than coat of mail, and wrap the poor and lowly in "measureless content." Take it.

The North will forgive if the South will forget. Take it! The negro will wipe from the tablet of memory the strokes and scars of two hundred years, and blur with happy tears the record of his wrongs. Take it! It will unite our nation. It will make us brothers once again. Take it! And justice will sit in your courts under the outspread wings of Peace. Take it! And the brain and lips of the future will be free. Take it! It will bud and blossom in your hands and fill your land with fragrance and with joy.

HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.

* Boston, October 20, 1878.

LADIES and Gentlemen:--The lovers of the human race, the philanthropists, the dreamers of grand dreams, all predicted and all believed that when man should have the right to govern himself, when every human being should be equal before the law, pauperism, crime, and want would exist only in the history of the past. They accounted for misery in their time by the rapacity of kings and the cruelty of priests. Here, in the United States, man at last is free. Here, man makes the laws, and all have an equal voice. The rich cannot oppress the poor, because the poor are in a majority. The laboring men, those who in some way work for their living, can elect every Congressman and every judge; they can make and interpret the laws, and if labor is oppressed in the United States by capital, labor has simply itself to blame.

The cry is now raised that capital in some mysterious way oppresses industry; that the capitalist is the enemy of the man who labors. What is a capitalist? Every man who has good health; every man with good sense; every one who has had his dinner, and has enough left for supper, is, to that extent, a capitalist. Every man with a good character, who has the credit to borrow a dollar or to buy a meal, is a capitalist; and nine out of ten of the great capitalists in the United States are simply successful workingmen. There is no conflict, and can be no conflict, in the United States between capital and labor; and the men who endeavor to excite the envy of the unfortunate and the malice of the poor are the enemies of law and order.

As a rule, wealth is the result of industry, economy, attention to business; and as a rule, poverty is the result of idleness, extravagance, and inattention to business, though to these rules there are thousands of exceptions. The man who has wasted his time, who has thrown away his opportunities, is apt to envy the man who has not. For instance, there are six shoemakers working in one shop. One of them attends to his business. You can hear the music of his hammer late and early. He is in love with some girl on the next street. He has made up his mind to be a man; to succeed; to make somebody else happy; to have a home; and while he is working, in his imagination he can see his own fireside, with the firelight falling upon the faces of wife and child.

The other five gentlemen work as little as they can, spend Sunday in dissipation, have the headache Monday, and, as a result, never advance.

The industrious one, the one in love, gains the confidence of his employer, and in a little while he cuts out work for the others. The first thing you know he has a shop of his own, the next a store; because the man of reputation, the man of character, the man of known integrity, can buy all he wishes in the United States upon a credit. The next thing you know he is married, and he has built him a house, and he is happy, and his dream has been realized. After awhile the same five shoemakers, having pursued the old course, stand on the corner some Sunday when he rides by. He has a carriage, his wife sits by his side, her face covered with smiles, and they have two children, their eyes beaming with joy, and the blue ribbons are fluttering in the wind. And thereupon, these five shoemakers adjourn to some neighboring saloon and pa.s.s a resolution that there is an irrepressible conflict between capital and labor.

There is, in fact, no such conflict, and the laboring men of the United States have the power to protect themselves. In the ballot-box the vote of Lazarus is on an equality with the vote of Dives; the vote of a wandering pauper counts the same as that of a millionaire. In a land where the poor, where the laboring men have the right and have the power to make the laws, and do, in fact, make the laws, certainly there should be no complaint. In our country the people hold the power, and if any corporation in any State is devouring the substance of the people, every State has retained the power of eminent domain, under which it can confiscate the property and franchise of any corporation by simply paying to that corporation what such property is worth. And yet thousands of people are talking as though the rich combined for the express purpose of destroying the poor, are talking as though there existed a widespread conspiracy against industry, against honest toil; and thousands and thousands of speeches have been made and numberless articles have been written to fill the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the unfortunate with hatred.

We have pa.s.sed through a period of wonderful and unprecedented inflation. For years we enjoyed the luxury of going into debt, the felicity of living upon credit. We have in the United States about eighty thousand miles of railway, more than enough to make a treble track around the globe. Most of these miles were built in a period of twenty-five years, and at a cost of at least five thousand millions of dollars. Think of the ore that had to be dug, of the iron that was melted; think of the thousands employed in cutting bridge timber and ties, and giving to the wintry air the music of the axe; think of the thousands and thousands employed in making cars, in making locomotives, those horses of progress with nerves of steel and breath of flame; think of the thousands and thousands of workers in bra.s.s and steel and iron; think of the numberless industries that thrived in the construction of eighty thousand miles of railway, of the streams bridged, of the mountains tunneled, of the plains crossed; and think of the towns and cities that sprang up, as if by magic, along these highways of iron.

During the same time we had a war in which we expended thousands of millions of dollars, not to create, not to construct, but to destroy.

All this money was spent in the work of demolition, and every shot and every sh.e.l.l and every musket and every cannon was used to destroy. All the time of every soldier was lost. An amount of property inconceivable was destroyed, and some of the best and bravest were sacrificed. During these years the productive power of the North was strained to the utmost; every wheel was in motion; there was employment for every kind and description of labor, and for every mechanic. There was a constantly rising market--speculation was rife, and it seemed almost impossible to lose. As a consequence, the men who had been toiling upon the farm became tired. It was too slow a way to get rich. They heard of their neighbor, of their brother, who had gone to the city and had suddenly become a millionaire. They became tired with the slow methods of agriculture. The young men of intelligence, of vim, of nerve became disgusted with the farms. On every hand fortunes were being made. A wave of wealth swept over the United States; huts became houses; houses became palaces with carpeted floors and pictured walls; tatters became garments; rags became robes; and for the first time in the history of the world, the poor tasted of the luxuries of wealth. We wondered how our fathers could have endured their poor and barren lives.

Every business was pressed to the snow line. Old life insurance a.s.sociations had been successful; new ones sprang up on every hand.

The agents filled every town. These agents were given a portion of the premium. You could hardly go out of your house without being told of the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. You were shown pictures of life insurance agents emptying vast bags of gold at the feet of a disconsolate widow. You saw in imagination your own fatherless children wiping away the tears of grief and smiling with joy.

These agents insured everybody and everything. They would have insured a hospital or consumption in its last hemorrhage.

Fire insurance was managed in precisely the same way. The agents received a part of the premium, and they insured anything and everything, no matter what its danger might be. They would have insured powder in perdition, or icebergs under the torrid zone with the same alacrity. And then there were accident companies, and you could not go to the station to buy your ticket without being shown a picture of disaster. You would see there four horses running away with a stage, and old ladies and children being thrown out; you would see a steamer being blown up on the Mississippi, legs one way and arms the other, heads one side and hats the other; locomotives going through bridges, good Samaritans carrying off the wounded on stretchers.

The merchants, too, were not satisfied to do business in the old way. It was too slow; they could not wait for customers. They filled the country with drummers, and these drummers convinced all the country merchants that they needed about twice as many goods as they could possibly sell, and they took their notes on sixty and ninety days, and renewed them whenever desired, provided the parties renewing the notes would take more goods. And these country merchants pressed the goods upon their customers in the same manner. Everybody was selling, everybody was buying, and nearly all was done upon a credit. No one believed the day of settlement ever would or ever could come. Towns must continue to grow, and in the imagination of speculators there were hundreds of cities numbering their millions of inhabitants. Land, miles and miles from the city, was laid out in blocks and squares and parks; land that will not be occupied for residences probably for hundreds of years to come, and these lots were sold, not by the acre, not by the square mile, but by so much per foot. They were sold on credit, with a partial payment down and the balance secured by a mortgage.

These values, of course, existed simply in the imagination; and a deed of trust upon a cloud or a mortgage upon a last year's fog would have been just as valuable. Everybody advertised, and those who were not selling goods and real estate were in the medicine line, and every rock beneath our flag was covered with advice to the unfortunate; and I have often thought that if some sincere Christian had made a pilgrimage to Sinai and climbed its venerable crags, and in a moment of devotion dropped upon his knees and raised his eyes toward heaven, the first thing that would have met his astonished gaze would in all probability have been:

"St. 1860 X Plantation Bitters."

Suddenly there came a crash. Jay Cooke failed, and I have heard thousands of men account for the subsequent hard times from the fact that Cooke did fail. As well might you account for the smallpox by saying that the first pustule was the cause of the disease. The failure of Jay Cooke & Co. was simply a symptom of a disease universal.

No language can describe the agonies that have been endured since 1873.

No language can tell the sufferings of the men that have wandered over the dreary and desolate desert of bankruptcy. Thousands and thousands supposed that they had enough, enough for their declining years, enough for wife and children, and suddenly found themselves paupers and vagrants.

During all these years the bankruptcy law was in force, and whoever failed to keep his promise had simply to take the benefit of this law.