The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IX Part 20

It means free hands, free lips, self-government and the sovereignty of the individual.

It means that this continent has been dedicated to freedom.

It means universal education,--light for every mind, knowledge for every child.

It means that the schoolhouse is the fortress of Liberty.

It means that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;" that each man is accountable to and for the Government; that responsibility goes hand in hand with liberty.

It means that it is the duty of every citizen to bear his share of the public burden,--to take part in the affairs of his town, his county, his State and his country.

It means that the ballot-box is the Ark of the Covenant; that the source of authority must not be poisoned.

It means the perpetual right of peaceful revolution. It means that every citizen of the Republic--native or naturalized--must be protected; at home, in every State,--abroad, in every land, on every sea.

It means that all distinctions based on birth or blood, have perished from our laws; that our Government shall stand between labor and capital, between the weak and the strong, between the individual and the corporation, between want and wealth, and give the guarantee of simple justice to each and all.

It means that there shall be a legal remedy for every wrong.

It means national hospitality,--that we must welcome to our sh.o.r.es the exiles of the world, and that we may not drive them back. Some may be deformed by labor, dwarfed by hunger, broken in spirit, victims of tyranny and caste,--in whose sad faces may be read the touching record of a weary life; and yet their children, born of liberty and love, will be symmetrical and fair, intelligent and free.

That flag is the emblem of a supreme will--of a Nation's power. Beneath its folds the weakest must be protected and the strongest must obey. It s.h.i.+elds and canopies alike the loftiest mansion and the rudest hut.

That flag was given to the air in the Revolution's darkest days. It represents the sufferings of the past, the glories yet to be; and like the bow of heaven, it is the child of storm and sun.

This day is sacred to the great heroic host who kept this flag above our heads,--sacred to the living and the dead--sacred to the scarred and maimed,--sacred to the wives who gave their husbands, to the mothers who gave their sons.

Here in this peaceful land of ours,--here where the sun s.h.i.+nes, where flowers grow, where children play, millions of armed men battled for the right and breasted on a thousand fields the iron storms of war.

These brave, these incomparable men, founded the first Republic. They fulfilled the prophecies; they brought to pa.s.s the dreams; they realized the hopes, that all the great and good and wise and just have made and had since man was man.

But what of those who fell? There is no language to express the debt we owe, the love we bear, to all the dead who died for us. Words are but barren sounds. We can but stand beside their graves and in the hush and silence feel what speech has never told.

They fought, they died; and for the first time since man has kept a record of events, the heavens bent above and domed a land without a serf, a servant or a slave.

DECORATION DAY ADDRESS.

* Empty sleeves worn by veterans with scanty locks and grizzled mustaches graced the Metropolitan Opera House last night. On the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their faded uniforms glittered the badges of the legions in which they had fought and suffered, and beside them sat the wives and daughters, whose hearts had ached at home while they served their country at the front.

Every seat in the great Opera House was filled, and hundreds stood, glad to And any place where they could see and hear.

And the gathering and the proceedings were worthy of the occasion.

Mr. Depew upon taking the chair said that he had the chief treat of the evening to present to the audience, and that was Robert G. Ingersoll, the greatest living orator, and one of the great controversialists of the age.

Then came the orator of the occasion Col. Ingersoll, whose speech is printed herewith.

Enthusiastic cheers greeted all his points, and his audience simply went wild at the end. It was a grand oration, and it was listened to by enthusiastic and appreciative hearers, upon whom not a single word was lost, and in whose hearts every word awoke a responsive echo.

Nor did the enthusiasm which Col. Ingersoll created end until the very last, when the whole a.s.semblage arose and sang "America" in a way which will never be forgotten by any one present. It was a great ending of a great evening.--The New York Times, May 31st, 1888.

New York City.

1888.

THIS is a sacred day--a day for grat.i.tude and love.

To-day we commemorate more than independence, more than the birth of a nation, more than the fruits of the Revolution, more than physical progress, more than the acc.u.mulation of wealth, more than national prestige and power.

We commemorate the great and blessed victory over ourselves--the triumph of civilization, the reformation of a people, the establishment of a government consecrated to the preservation of liberty and the equal rights of man.

Nations can win success, can be rich and powerful, can cover the earth with their armies, the seas with their fleets, and yet be selfish, small and mean. Physical progress means opportunity for doing good. It means responsibility. Wealth is the end of the despicable, victory the purpose of brutality.

But there is something n.o.bler than all these--something that rises above wealth and power--something above lands and palaces--something above raiment and gold--it is the love of right, the cultivation of the moral nature, the desire to do justice, the inextinguishable love of human liberty.

Nothing can be n.o.bler than a nation governed by conscience, nothing more infamous than power without pity, wealth without honor and without the sense of justice.

Only by the soldiers of the right can the laurel be won or worn.

On this day we honor the heroes who fought to make our Nation just and free--who broke the shackles of the slave, who freed the masters of the South and their allies of the North. We honor chivalric men who made America the hope and beacon of the human race--the foremost Nation of the world.

These heroes established the first republic, and demonstrated that a government in which the legally expressed will of the people is sovereign and supreme is the safest, strongest, securest, n.o.blest and the best.

They demonstrated the human right of the people, and of all the people, to make and execute the laws--that authority does not come from the clouds, or from ancestry, or from the crowned and t.i.tled, or from const.i.tutions and compacts, laws and customs--not from the admissions of the great, or the concessions of the powerful and victorious--not from graves, or consecrated dust--not from treaties made between successful robbers--not from the decisions of corrupt and menial courts--not from the dead, but from the living--not from the past but from the present, from the people of to-day--from the brain, from the heart and from the conscience of those who live and love and labor.

The history of this world for the most part is the history of conflict and war, of invasion, of conquest, of victorious wrong, of the many enslaved by the few.

Millions have fought for kings, for the destruction and enslavement of their fellow-men. Millions have battled for empire, and great armies have been inspired by the hope of pillage; but for the first time in the history of this world millions of men battled for the right, fought to free not themselves, but others, not for prejudice, but for principle, not for conquest, but for conscience.

The men whom we honor were the liberators of a Nation, of a whole country, North and South--of two races. They freed the body and the brain, gave liberty to master and to slave. They opened all the highways of thought, and gave to fifty millions of people the inestimable legacy of free speech.

They established the free exchange of thought. They gave to the air a flag without a stain, and they gave to their country a Const.i.tution that honest men can reverently obey. They destroyed the hateful, the egotistic and provincial--they established a Nation, a national spirit, a national pride and a patriotism as broad as the great Republic.

They did away with that ignorant and cruel prejudice that human rights depend on race or color, and that the superior race has the right to oppress the inferior. They established the sublime truth that the superior are the just, the kind, the generous, and merciful--that the really superior are the protectors, the defenders, and the saviors of the oppressed, of the fallen, the unfortunate, the weak and helpless.

They established that greatest of all truths that nothing is n.o.bler than to labor and suffer for others.

If we wish to know the extent of our debt to these heroes, these soldiers of the right, we must know what we were and what we are. A few years ago we talked about liberty, about the freedom of the world, and while so talking we enslaved our fellow-men. We were the stealers of babes and the whippers of women. We were in partners.h.i.+p with bloodhounds. We lived on unpaid labor. We held manhood in contempt.

Honest toil was disgraceful--sympathy was a crime--pity was unconst.i.tutional--humanity contrary to law, and charity was treason. Men were imprisoned for pointing out in heaven's dome the Northern Star--for giving food to the hungry, water to the parched lips of thirst, shelter to the hunted, succor to the oppressed. In those days criminals and courts, pirates and pulpits were in partners.h.i.+p--liberty was only a word standing for the equal rights of robbers.

For many years we insisted that our fathers had founded a free Government, that they were the lovers of liberty, believers in equal rights. We were mistaken. The colonists did not believe in the freedom of to-day. Their laws were filled with intolerance, with slavery and the infamous spirit of caste. They persecuted and enslaved. Most of them were narrow, ignorant and cruel. For the most part, their laws were more brutal than those of the nations from which they came. They branded the forehead of intelligence, bored with hot irons the tongue of truth. They persecuted the good and enslaved the helpless. They were believers in pillories and whipping-posts for honest, thoughtful men.

When their independence was secured they adopted a Const.i.tution that legalized slavery, and they pa.s.sed laws making it the duty of free men to prevent others from becoming free. They followed the example of kings and n.o.bles. They knew that monarchs had been interested in the slave trade, and that the first English commander of a slave-s.h.i.+p divided his profits with a queen.

They forgot all the splendid things they had said--the great principles they had so proudly and eloquently announced. The sublime truths faded from their hearts. The spirit of trade, the greed for office, took possession of their souls. The lessons of history were forgotten. The voices coming from all the wrecks of kingdoms, empires and republics on the sh.o.r.es of the great river were unheeded and unheard.

If the foundation is not justice, the dome cannot be high enough, or splendid enough, to save the temple.