The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XI Part 7

Mr. Reynolds went to Boonton last summer to hold "free- thought" meetings. Announcing his purpose without any flourish, he secured a piece of ground, pitched a tent upon it, and invited the towns-people to come and hear him. It was understood that he had been a Methodist minister: that, finding it impossible to reconcile his mind to some of the historical parts of the Bible, and unable to accept it in its entirety as a moral guide, he left the church and set out to proclaim his conclusions. The churches in Boonton arrayed themselves against him. The Catholics and Methodists were especially active. Taking this opposition as an excuse, one element of the town invaded his tent. They pelted Reynolds with ancient eggs and vegetables. They chopped away the guy ropes of the tent and slashed the canvas with their knives. When the tent collapsed, the crowd rushed for the speaker to inflict further punishment by plunging him in the duck pond They rummaged the wrecked tent, but in vain. He had made his way ont in the confusion and was no more seen in Boonton.

But what he had said did not leave Boonton with him, and the pamphlets he had distributed were read by many who probably would not have looked between their covers had his visit been attended by no unusual circ.u.mstances. Boonton was still agitated up on the subject when Mr. Reynolds appeared in Morristown. This time he did not try to hold meetings, but had his pamphlets with him.

Mr. Reynolds appeared in Morristown with the pamphlets on October thirteenth. A Boonton delegation was there, clamoring for his indictment for blasphemy. The Grand Jury heard of his visit and found two indictments against him; one for blasphemy at

Boonton and the second for blasphemy at Morristown. He furnished a five hundred dollar bond to appear for trial. On account of Colonel Ingersoll's throat troubles the case was adjourned several times through the winter and until Monday last, when it was set peremptorily for trial yesterday.

The public feeling excited at Boonton was overshadowed by that at Morristown and the neighboring region. For six months no topic was so interesting to the public as this. It monopolized attention at the stores, and became a fruitful subject of gossip in social and church circles. Under such circ.u.mstances it was to be expected that everybody who could spare the time would go to court yesterday. Lines of people began to climb the court house hill early in the morning. At the hour of opening court the room set apart for the trial was packed, and distaffs had to be stationed at the foot of the stairs to keep back those who were not early enough.

From nine thirty to eleven o'clock the crowd inside talked of blasphemy in all the phases suggested by this case, and the outsiders waited patiently on the lawn and steps and along the dusty approaches to the gray building.

Eleven o'clock brought the train from New York and on it Colonel Ingersoll. His arrival at the court house with his clerk opened a new chapter in the day's gossip. The event was so absorbing indeed, that the crowd failed entirely to notice an elderly man wearing a black frock snit, a silk hat, with an army badge pinned to his coat, and looking like a merchant of means, who entered the court house a few minutes behind the famous lawyer. The last comer was the defendant.

All was ready for the case. Within five minutes five jurors were in the box. Then Colonel Ingersoll asked what were his rights about challenges. He was informed that he might make six peremptory challenges and must challenge before the jurors took their seats. The only disqualification the Court would recognize would be the inability of a juror to change his opinion in spite of evidence. Colonel Ingersoll induced the Court to let him examine the five in the box and promptly ejected two Presbyterians.

Thereafter Colonel Ingersoll examined every juror as soon as presented. He asked particularly about the nature of each man's prejudice, if he had one. To a juror who did not know that he understood the word, the Colonel replied: "I may not define the word legally, but my own idea is that a man is prejudiced when he has made up his mind on a case without knowing anything about it." This juror thought that he came under that category.

Presbyterians had a rather hard time with the examiner.

After twenty men had been examined and the defence had exercised five of its peremptory challenges, the following were sworn as jurymen. * * * *

The jury having been sworn, Prosecutor Cutler announced that he would try only the indictment for the offence in Morristown. He said that Reynolds was charged with distributing pamphlets containing matter claimed to be blasphemous under the law. If the charge could be proved he asked a verdict of guilty. Then he called sixteen towns- people, to most of whom Reynolds had given a pamphlet.

Colonel Ingersoll tried to get the Presbyterian witnesses to say that they had read the pamphlet. Not one of them admitted it. Further than this he attempted no cross-examination.

"I do not know that I shall have any witnesses one way or the other," Colonel Ingersoll said, rising to suggest a recess. "Perhaps after dinner I may feel like making a few remarks."

"There will be great disappointment if you do not" Judge Child responded, in a tone that meant a word for himself as well as for the other listeners. The spectators nodded approval to this sentiment. At 4:20 o'clock Col. Ingersoll having spoken since 2 o'clock, Judge Child adjourned court until this morning.

As Colonel Ingersoll left the room a throng pressed after him to offer congratulations. One old man said: "Colonel Ingersoll I am a Presbyterian pastor, but I must say that was the n.o.blest speech in defence of liberty I ever heard!

Your hand, sir; your hand,"--The Times, New York, May 20,1887.

GENTLEMEN of the Jury: I regard this as one of the most important cases that can be submitted to a jury. It is not a case that involves a little property, neither is it one that involves simply the liberty of one man.

It involves the freedom of speech, the intellectual liberty of every citizen of New Jersey.

The question to be tried by you is whether a man has the right to express his honest thought; and for that reason there can be no case of greater importance submitted to a jury. And it may be well enough for me, at the outset, to admit that there could be no case in which I could take a greater--a deeper interest. For my part, I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.

I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips--to make the tongue a convict.

I pa.s.sionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain. A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men. If you have the right to work with your hands and to gather the harvest for yourself and your children, have you not a right to cultivate your brain? Have you not the right to read, to observe, to investigate--and when you have so read and so investigated, have you not the right to reap that field? And what is it to reap that field? It is simply to express what you have ascertained--simply to give your thoughts to your fellow-men.

If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves. If you have not the right to express your opinions, if the defendant has not this right, then no man ever walked beneath the blue of heaven that had the right to express his thought. If others claim the right, where did they get it? How did they happen to have it, and how did you happen to be deprived of it? Where did a church or a nation get that right?

Are we not all children of the same Mother? Are we not all compelled to think, whether we wish to or not? Can you help thinking as you do? When you look out upon the woods, the fields,--when you look at the solemn splendors of the night--these things produce certain thoughts in your mind, and they produce them necessarily. No man can think as he desires.

No man controls the action of his brain, any more than he controls the action of his heart. The blood pursues its old accustomed ways in spite of you. The eyes see, if you open them, in spite of you. The ears hear, if they are unstopped, without asking your permission. And the brain thinks in spite of you. Should you express that thought? Certainly you should, if others express theirs. You have exactly the same right. He who takes it from you is a robber.

For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why?

Because brute force is not an argument. You can stand with the lash over a man, or you can stand by the prison door, or beneath the gallows, or by the stake, and say to this man: "Recant or the lash descends, the prison door is locked upon you, the rope is put about your neck, or the torch is given to the f.a.got." And so the man recants. Is he convinced?

Not at all. Have you produced a new argument? Not the slightest. And yet the ignorant bigots of this world have been trying for thousands of years to rule the minds of men by brute force. They have endeavored to improve the mind by torturing the flesh--to spread religion with the sword and torch. They have tried to convince their brothers by putting their feet in iron boots, by putting fathers, mothers, patriots, philosophers and philanthropists in dungeons. And what has been the result? Are we any nearer thinking alike to-day than we were then?

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame. And yet every church that ever was established commenced in the minority, and while it was in the minority advocated free speech--every one. John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church, while he lived in France, wrote a book on religious toleration in order to show that all men had an equal right to think; and yet that man afterward, clothed in a little authority, forgot all his sentiments about religious liberty, and had poor Servetus burned at the stake, for differing with him on a question that neither of them knew anything about. In the minority, Calvin advocated toleration--in the majority, he practiced murder.

I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike, he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever--why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan--if he wanted us all to believe alike?

After all, may be Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. May be, after all, it would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world, if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.

The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes--more important than gold or houses or lands--more important than art or science--more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.

If civilization tends to do away with liberty, then I agree with Mr. Buckle that civilization is a curse. Gladly would I give up the splendors of the nineteenth century--gladly would I forget every invention that has leaped from the brain of man--gladly would I see all books ashes, all works of art destroyed, all statues broken, and all the triumphs of the world lost--gladly, joyously would I go back to the abodes and dens of savagery, if that were necessary to preserve the inestimable gem of human liberty. So would every man who has a heart and brain.

How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself?

Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in, and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who pa.s.sed it. Never. By making a statute and by defining blasphemy, the church sought to prevent discussion--sought to prevent argument--sought to prevent a man giving his honest opinion. Certainly a tenet, a dogma, a doctrine, is safe when hedged about by a statute that prevents your speaking against it. In the silence of slavery it exists. It lives because lips are locked. It lives because men are slaves.

If I understand myself, I advocate only the doctrines that in my judgment will make this world happier and better. If I know myself, I advocate only those things that will make a man a better citizen, a better father, a kinder husband--that will make a woman a better wife, a better mother--doctrines that will fill every home with suns.h.i.+ne and with joy. And if I believed that anything I should say to-day would have any other possible tendency, I would stop. I am a believer in liberty.

That is my religion--to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right--because it is his right--but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I urge--in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.

I am a believer in what I call "intellectual hospitality." A man comes to your door. If you are a gentleman and he appears to be a good man, you receive him with a smile. You ask after his health. You say: "Take a chair; are you thirsty, are you hungry, will you not break bread with me?" That is what a hospitable, good man does--he does not set the dog on him. Now, how should we treat a new thought? I say that the brain should be hospitable and say to the new thought: "Come in; sit down; I want to cross-examine you; I want to find whether you are good or bad; if good, stay; if bad, I don't want to hurt you--probably you think you are all right,--but your room is better than your company, and I will take another idea in your place." Why not? Can any man have the egotism to say that he has found it all out? No. Every man who has thought, knows not only how little he knows, but how little every other human being knows, and how ignorant, after all, the world must be.

There was a time in Europe when the Catholic Church had power. And I want it distinctly understood with this jury, that while I am opposed to Catholicism I am not opposed to Catholics--while I am opposed to Presbyterianism I am not opposed to Presbyterians. I do not fight people,--I fight ideas, I fight principles, and I never go into personalities. As I said, I do not hate Presbyterians, but Presbyterianism--that is, I am opposed to their doctrine. I do not hate a man that has the rheumatism--I hate the rheumatism when it has a man.

So I attack certain principles because I think they are wrong, but I always want it understood that I have nothing against persons--nothing against victims.

There was a time when the Catholic Church was in power in the Old World.

All at once there arose a man called Martin Luther, and what did the dear old Catholics think? "Oh," they said, "that man and his followers are going to h.e.l.l." But they did not go. They were very good people.

They may have been mistaken--I do not know. I think they were right in their opposition to Catholicism--but I have just as much objection to the religion they founded as I have to the church they left. But they thought they were right, and they made very good citizens, and it turned out that their differing from the Mother Church did not hurt them.

And then after awhile they began to divide, and there arose Baptists; and-the other gentlemen, who believed in this law that is now in New Jersey, began cutting off their ears so that they could hear better; they began putting them in prison so that they would have a chance to think. But the Baptists turned out to be good folks--first rate--good husbands, good fathers, good citizens. And in a little while, in England, the people turned to be Episcopalians, on account of a little war that Henry VIII. had with the Pope,--and I always sided with the Pope in that war--but it made no difference; and in a little while the Episcopalians turned out to be just about like other folks--no worse--and, as I know of, no better.

After awhile arose the Puritan, and the Episcopalian said, "We don't want anything of him--he is a bad man;" and they finally drove some of them away and they settled in New England, and there were among them Quakers, than whom there never were better people on the earth--industrious, frugal, gentle, kind and loving--and yet these Puritans began hanging them. They said: "They are corrupting our children; if this thing goes on, everybody will believe in being kind and gentle and good, and what will become of us?" They were honest about it. So they went to cutting off ears. But the Quakers were good people and none of the prophecies were fulfilled.

In a little while there came some Unitarians and they said, "The world is going to ruin, sure;"--but the world went on as usual, and the Unitarians produced men like Channing--one of the tenderest spirits that ever lived--they produced men like Theodore Parker--one of the greatest brained and greatest hearted men produced upon this continent--a good man--and yet they thought he was a blasphemer--they even prayed for his death--on their bended knees they asked their G.o.d to take time to kill him. Well, they were mistaken. Honest, probably.

After awhile came the Universalists, who said: "G.o.d is good. He will not d.a.m.n anybody always, just for a little mistake he made here. This is a very short life; the path we travel is very dim, and a great many shadows fall in the way, and if a man happens to stub his toe, G.o.d will not burn him forever." And then all the rest of the sects cried out, "Why, if you do away with h.e.l.l, everybody will murder just for pastime--everybody will go to stealing just to enjoy themselves." But they did not. The Universalists were good people--just as good as any others. Most of them much better. None of the prophecies were fulfilled, and yet the differences existed.

And so we go on until we find people who do not believe the Bible at all, and when they say they do not, they come within this statute.

Now, gentlemen, I am going to try to show you, first, that this statute under which Mr. Reynolds is being tried is unconst.i.tutional--that it is not in harmony with the const.i.tution of New Jersey; and I am going to try to show you in addition to that, that it was pa.s.sed hundreds of years ago, by men who believed it was right to burn heretics and tie Quakers to the end of a cart; men and even modest women--stripped naked--and lash them from town to town. They were the men who originally pa.s.sed that statute, and I want to show you that it has slept all this time, and I am informed--I do not know how it is--that there never has been a prosecution in this State for blasphemy.

Now, gentlemen, what is blasphemy? Of course n.o.body knows what it is, unless he takes into consideration where he is. What is blasphemy in one country would be a religious exhortation, in another. It is owing to where you are and who is in authority. And let me call your attention to the impudence and bigotry of the American Christians. We send missionaries to other countries. What for? To tell them that their religion is false, that their G.o.ds are myths and monsters, that their saviors and apostles were impostors, and that our religion is true.

You send a man from Morristown--a Presbyterian, over to Turkey. He goes there, and he tells the Mohammedans--and he has it in a pamphlet and he distributes it--that the Koran is a lie, that Mohammed was not a prophet of G.o.d, that the angel Gabriel is not so large that it is four hundred leagues between his eyes--that it is all a mistake--there never was an angel so large as that. Then what would the Turks do? Suppose the Turks had a law like this statute in New Jersey. They would put the Morristown missionary in jail, and he would send home word, and then what would the people of Morristown say? Honestly--what do you think they would say?

They would say, "Why, look at those poor, heathen wretches. We sent a man over there armed with the truth, and yet they were so blinded by their idolatrous religion, so steeped in superst.i.tion, that they actually put that man in prison." Gentlemen, does not that show the need of more missionaries? I would say, yes.

Now, let us turn the tables. A gentleman comes from Turkey to Morristown. He has got a pamphlet. He says, "The Koran is the inspired book, Mohammed is the real prophet, your Bible is false and your Savior simply a myth." Thereupon the Morristown people put him in jail.

Then what would the Turks say? They would say, "Morristown needs more missionaries," and I would agree with them.

In other words, what we want is intellectual hospitality. Let the world talk. And see how foolish this trial is. I have no doubt that the prosecuting attorney-agrees with me to-day, that whether this law is good or bad, this trial should not have taken place. And let me tell you why. Here comes a man into your town and circulates a pamphlet. Now, if they had just kept still, very few would ever have heard of it. That would have been the end. The diameter of the echo would have been a few thousand feet. But in order to stop the discussion of that question, they indicted this man, and that question has been more discussed in this country since this indictment than all the discussions put together since New Jersey was first granted to Charles II.'s dearest brother James, the Duke of York.. And what else? A trial here that is to be reported and published all over the United States, a trial that will give Mr. Reynolds a congregation of fifty millions of people. And yet this was done for the purpose of stopping a discussion of this subject.

I want to show you that the thing is in itself almost idiotic--that it defeats itself, and that you cannot crush out these things by force. Not only so, but Mr. Reynolds has the right to be defended, and his counsel has the right to give his opinions on this subject.

Suppose that we put Mr. Reynolds in jail. The argument has not been sent to jail. That is still going the rounds, free as the winds. Suppose you keep him at hard labor a year--all the time he is there, hundreds and thousands of people will be reading some account, or some fragment, of this trial. There is the trouble. If you could only imprison a thought, then intellectual tyranny might succeed. If you could only take an argument and put a striped suit of clothes on it--if you could only take a good, splendid, s.h.i.+ning fact and lock it up in some dungeon of ignorance, so that its light would never again enter the mind of man, then you might succeed in stopping human progress. Otherwise, no.

Let us see about this particular statute. In the first place, the State has a const.i.tution. That const.i.tution is a rule, a limitation to the power of the Legislature, and a certain breastwork for the protection of private rights, and the const.i.tution says to this sea of pa.s.sions and prejudices: "Thus far and no farther." The const.i.tution says to each individual: "This shall panoply you; this is your complete coat of mail; this shall defend your rights." And it is usual in this country to make as a part of each const.i.tution several general declarations--called the Bill of Rights. So I find that in the old const.i.tution of New Jersey, which was adopted in the year of grace 1776, although the people at that time were not educated as they are now--the spirit of the Revolution at that time not having permeated all cla.s.ses of society--a declaration in favor of religious freedom. The people were on the eve of a revolution.

This const.i.tution was adopted on the third day of July, 1776, one day before the immortal Declaration of Independence. Now, what do we find in this--and we have got to go by this light, by this torch, when we examine the statute.