The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 8

_Answer_. Where does Mr. Buckner propose to colonize the white people, and what right has he to propose the colonization of six millions of people? Should we not have other bills to colonize the Germans, the Swedes, the Irish, and then, may be, another bill to drive the Chinese into the sea? Where do we get the right to say that the negroes must emigrate?

All such schemes will, in my judgment, prove utterly futile.

Perhaps the history of the world does not give an instance of the emigration of six millions of people. Notwithstanding the treatment that Ireland has received from England, which may be designated as a crime of three hundred years, the Irish still love Ireland. All the despotism in the world will never crush out of the Irish heart the love of home--the adoration of the old sod. The negroes of the South have certainly suffered enough to drive them into other countries; but after all, they prefer to stay where they were born.

They prefer to live where their ancestors were slaves, where fathers and mothers were sold and whipped; and I don't believe it will be possible to induce a majority of them to leave that land. Of course, thousands may leave, and in process of time millions may go, but I don't believe emigration will ever equal their natural increase. As the whites of the South become civilized the reason for going will be less and less.

I see no reason why the white and black men cannot live together in the same land, under the same flag. The beauty of liberty is you cannot have it unless you give it away, and the more you give away the more you have. I know that my liberty is secure only because others are free.

I am perfectly willing to live in a country with such men as Frederick Dougla.s.s and Senator Bruce. I have always preferred a good, clever black man to a mean white man, and I am of the opinion that I shall continue in that preference. Now, if we could only have a colonization bill that would get rid of all the rowdies, all the rascals and hypocrites, I would like to see it carried out, thought some people might insist that it would amount to a repudiation of the national debt and that hardly enough would be left to pay the interest. No, talk as we will, the colored people helped to save this Nation. They have been at all times and in all places the friends of our flag; a flag that never really protected them.

And for my part, I am willing that they should stand forever beneath that flag, the equal in rights of all other people. Politically, if any black men are to be sent away, I want it understood that each one is to be accompanied by a Democrat, so that the balance of power, especially in New York, will not be disturbed.

_Question_. I notice that leading Republican newspapers are advising General Garfield to cut loose from the machine in politics; what do you regard as the machine?

_Answer_. All defeated candidates regard the persons who defeated them as const.i.tuting a machine, and always imagine that there is some wicked conspiracy at the bottom of the machine. Some of the recent reformers regard the people who take part in the early stages of a political campaign--who attend caucuses and primaries, who speak of politics to their neighbors, as members and parts of the machine, and regard only those as good and reliable American citizens who take no part whatever, simply reserving the right to grumble after the work has been done by others. Not much can be accomplished in politics without an organization, and the moment an organization is formed, and, you might say, just a little before, leading spirits will be developed. Certain men will take the lead, and the weaker men will in a short time, unless they get all the loaves and fishes, denounce the whole thing as a machine, and, to show how thoroughly and honestly they detest the machine in politics, will endeavor to organize a little machine themselves. General Garfield has been in politics for many years. He knows the princ.i.p.al men in both parties. He knows the men who have not only done something, but who are capable of doing something, and such men will not, in my opinion, be neglected. I do not believe that General Garfield will do any act calculated to divide the Republican party. No thoroughly great man carries personal prejudice into the administration of public affairs. Of course, thousands of people will be prophesying that this man is to be snubbed and another to be paid; but, in my judgment, after the 4th of March most people will say that General Garfield has used his power wisely and that he has neither sought nor shunned men simply because he wished to pay debts--either of love or hatred.

--Washington correspondent, _Brooklyn Eagle_, January 31, 1881.

HADES, DELAWARE AND FREETHOUGHT.

_Question_. Now that a lull has come in politics, I thought I would come and see what is going on in the religious world?

_Answer_. Well, from what little I learn, there has not been much going on during the last year. There are five hundred and twenty- six Congregational Churches in Ma.s.sachusetts, and two hundred of these churches have not received a new member for an entire year, and the others have scarcely held their own. In Illinois there are four hundred and eighty-three Presbyterian Churches, and they have now fewer members than they had in 1879, and of the four hundred and eighty-three, one hundred and eighty-three have not received a single new member for twelve months. A report has been made, under the auspices of the Pan-Presbyterian Council, to the effect that there are in the whole world about three millions of Presbyterians. This is about one-fifth of one per cent. of the inhabitants of the world. The probability is that of the three million nominal Presbyterians, not more than two or three hundred thousand actually believe the doctrine, and of the two or three hundred thousand, not more than five or six hundred have any true conception of what the doctrine is. As the Presbyterian Church has only been able to induce one-fifth of one per cent. of the people to even call themselves Presbyterians, about how long will it take, at this rate, to convert mankind? The fact is, there seems to be a general lull along the entire line, and just at present very little is being done by the orthodox people to keep their fellow-citizens out of h.e.l.l.

_Question_. Do you really think that the orthodox people now believe in the old doctrine of eternal punishment, and that they really think there is a kind of h.e.l.l that our ancestors so carefully described?

_Answer_. I am afraid that the old idea is dying out, and that many Christians are slowly giving up the consolations naturally springing from the old belief. Another terrible blow to the old infamy is the fact that in the revised New Testament the word Hades has been subst.i.tuted. As n.o.body knows exactly what Hades means, it will not be quite so easy to frighten people at revivals by threatening them with something that they don't clearly understand.

After this, when the impa.s.sioned orator cries out that all the unconverted will be sent to Hades, the poor sinners, instead of getting frightened, will begin to ask each other what and where that is. It will take many years of preaching to clothe that word in all the terrors and horrors, pains, and penalties and pangs of h.e.l.l. Hades is a compromise. It is a concession to the philosophy of our day. It is a graceful acknowledgment to the growing spirit of investigation, that h.e.l.l, after all, is a barbaric mistake.

Hades is the death of revivals. It cannot be used in song. It won't rhyme with anything with the same force that h.e.l.l does. It is altogether more shadowy than hot. It is not a.s.sociated with brimstone and flame. It sounds somewhat indistinct, somewhat lonesome, a little desolate, but not altogether uncomfortable.

For revival purposes, Hades is simply useless, and few conversions will be made in the old way under the revised Testament.

_Question_. Do you really think that the church is losing ground?

_Answer_. I am not, as you probably know, connected with any orthodox organization, and consequently have to rely upon them for my information. If they can be believed, the church is certainly in an extremely bad condition. I find that the Rev. Dr. Cuyler, only a few days ago, speaking of the religious condition of Brooklyn --and Brooklyn, you know, has been called the City of Churches-- states that the great ma.s.s of that Christian city was out of Christ, and that more professing Christians went to the theatre than to the prayer meeting. This, certainly, from their standpoint, is a most terrible declaration. Brooklyn, you know, is one of the great religious centres of the world--a city in which nearly all the people are engaged either in delivering or in hearing sermons; a city filled with the editors of religious periodicals; a city of prayer and praise; and yet, while prayer meetings are free, the theatres, with the free list entirely suspended, catch more Christians than the churches; and this happens while all the pulpits thunder against the stage, and the stage remains silent as to the pulpit.

At the same meeting in which the Rev. Dr. Cuyler made his astounding statements the Rev. Mr. Pentecost was the bearer of the happy news that four out of five persons living in the city of Brooklyn were going down to h.e.l.l with no G.o.d and with no hope. If he had read the revised Testament he would have said "Hades," and the effect of the statement would have been entirely lost. If four-fifths of the people of that great city are destined to eternal pain, certainly we cannot depend upon churches for the salvation of the world. At the meeting of the Brooklyn pastors they were in doubt as to whether they should depend upon further meetings, or upon a day of fasting and prayer for the purpose of converting the city.

In my judgment, it would be much better to devise ways and means to keep a good many people from fasting in Brooklyn. If they had more meat, they could get along with less meeting. If fasting would save a city, there are always plenty of hungry folks even in that Christian town. The real trouble with the church of to-day is, that it is behind the intelligence of the people. Its doctrines no longer satisfy the brains of the nineteenth century; and if the church proposes to hold its power, it must lose its superst.i.tions.

The day of revivals is gone. Only the ignorant and unthinking can hereafter be impressed by hearing the orthodox creed. Fear has in it no reformatory power, and the more intelligent the world grows the more despicable and contemptible the doctrine of eternal misery will become. The tendency of the age is toward intellectual liberty, toward personal investigation. Authority is no longer taken for truth. People are beginning to find that all the great and good are not dead--that some good people are alive, and that the demonstrations of to-day are fully equal to the mistaken theories of the past.

_Question_. How are you getting along with Delaware?

_Answer_. First rate. You know I have been wondering where Comegys came from, and at last I have made the discovery. I was told the other day by a gentleman from Delaware that many years ago Colonel Hazelitt died; that Colonel Hazelitt was an old Revolutionary officer, and that when they were digging his grave they dug up Comegys. Back of that no one knows anything of his history. The only thing they know about him certainly, is, that he has never changed one of his views since he was found, and that he never will. I am inclined to think, however, that he lives in a community congenial to him. For instance, I saw in a paper the other day that within a radius of thirty miles around Georgetown, Delaware, there are about two hundred orphan and friendless children. These children, it seems, were indentured to Delaware farmers by the managers of orphan asylums and other public inst.i.tutions in and about Philadelphia. It is stated in the paper, that:

"Many of these farmers are rough task-masters, and if a boy fails to perform the work of an adult, he is almost certain to be cruelly treated, half starved, and in the coldest weather wretchedly clad.

If he does the work, his life is not likely to be much happier, for as a rule he will receive more kicks than candy. The result in either case is almost certain to be wrecked const.i.tutions, dwarfed bodies, rounded shoulders, and limbs crippled or rendered useless by frost or rheumatism. The princ.i.p.al diet of these boys is corn pone. A few days ago, Constable W. H. Johnston went to the house of Reuben Taylor, and on entering the sitting room his attention was attracted by the moans of its only occupant, a little colored boy, who was lying on the hearth in front of the fireplace.

The boy's head was covered with ashes from the fire, and he did not pay the slightest attention to the visitor, until Johnston asked what made him cry. Then the little fellow sat up and drawing on old rag off his foot said, 'Look there.' The sight that met Johnston's eye was horrible beyond description. The poor boy's feet were so horribly frozen that the flesh had dropped off the toes until the bones protruded. The flesh on the sides, bottoms, and tops of his feet was swollen until the skin cracked in many places, and the inflamed flesh was sloughing off in great flakes.

The frost-bitten flesh extended to his knees, the joints of which were terribly inflamed. The right one had already begun suppurating.

This poor little black boy, covered with nothing but a cotton shirt, drilling pants, a pair of nearly worn out brogans and a battered old hat, on the morning of December 30th, the coldest day of the season, when the mercury was seventeen degrees below zero, in the face of a driving snow storm, was sent half a mile from home to protect his master's unshucked corn from the depredations of marauding cows and crows. He remained standing around in the snow until four o'clock, then he drove the cows home, received a piece of cold corn pone, and was sent out in the snow again to chop stove wood till dark. Having no bed, he slept that night in front of the fireplace, with his frozen feet buried in the ashes. Dr. C.

H. Richards found it necessary to cut off the boy's feet as far back as the ankle and the instep."

This was but one case in several. Personally, I have no doubt that Mr. Reuben Taylor entirely agrees with Chief Justice Comegys on the great question of blasphemy, and probably nothing would so gratify Mr. Reuben Taylor as to see some man in a Delaware jail for the crime of having expressed an honest thought. No wonder that in the State of Delaware the Christ of intellectual liberty has been crucified between the pillory and the whipping-post. Of course I know that there are thousands of most excellent people in that State--people who believe in intellectual liberty, and who only need a little help--and I am doing what I can in that direction --to repeal the laws that now disgrace the statute book of that little commonwealth. I have seen many people from that State lately who really wish that Colonel Hazelitt had never died.

_Question_. What has the press generally said with regard to the action of Judge Comegys? Do they, so far as you know, justify his charge?

_Answer_. A great many papers having articles upon the subject have been sent to me. A few of the religious papers seem to think that the Judge did the best he knew, and there is one secular paper called the _Evening News_, published at Chester, Pa., that thinks "that the rebuke from so high a source of authority will have a most excellent effect, and will check religious blasphemers from parading their immoral creeds before the people." The editor of this paper should at once emigrate to the State of Delaware, where he properly belongs. He is either a native of Delaware, or most of his subscribers are citizens of that country; or, it may be that he is a lineal descendant of some Hessian, who deserted during the Revolutionary war. Most of the newspapers in the United States are advocates of mental freedom. Probably nothing on earth has been so potent for good as an untrammeled, fearless press. Among the papers of importance there is not a solitary exception. No leading journal in the United States can be found upon the side of intellectual slavery. Of course, a few rural sheets edited by gentlemen, as Mr. Greeley would say, "whom G.o.d in his inscrutable wisdom had allowed to exist," may be found upon the other side, and may be small enough, weak enough and mean enough to pander to the lowest and basest prejudices of their most ignorant subscribers.

These editors disgrace their profession and exert about the same influence upon the heads as upon the pockets of their subscribers --that is to say, they get little and give less.

_Question_. Do you not think after all, the people who are in favor of having you arrested for blasphemy, are acting in accordance with the real spirit of the Old and New Testaments?

_Answer_. Of course, they act in exact accordance with many of the commands in the Old Testament, and in accordance with several pa.s.sages in the New. At the same time, it may be said that they violate pa.s.sages in both. If the Old Testament is true, and if it is the inspired word of G.o.d, of course, an Infidel ought not be allowed to live; and if the New Testament is true, an unbeliever should not be permitted to speak. There are many pa.s.sages, though, in the New Testament, that should protect even an Infidel. Among them is this: "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you." But that is a pa.s.sage that has probably had as little effect upon the church as any other in the Bible. So far as I am concerned, I am willing to adopt that pa.s.sage, and I am willing to extend to every other human being every right that I claim for myself. If the churches would act upon this principle, if they would say--every soul, every mind, may think and investigate for itself; and around all, and over all, shall be thrown the sacred shield of liberty, I should be on their side.

_Question_. How do you stand with the clergymen, and what is their opinion of you and of your views?

_Answer_. Most of them envy me; envy my independence; envy my success; think that I ought to starve; that the people should not hear me; say that I do what I do for money, for popularity; that I am actuated by hatred of all that is good and tender and holy in human nature; think that I wish to tear down the churches, destroy all morality and goodness, and usher in the reign of crime and chaos. They know that shepherds are unnecessary in the absence of wolves, and it is to their interest to convince their sheep that they, the sheep, need protection. This they are willing to give them for half the wool. No doubt, most of these minsters are honest, and are doing what they consider their duty. Be this as it may, they feel the power slipping from their hands. They know that the idea is slowly growing that they are not absolutely necessary for the protection of society. They know that the intellectual world cares little for what they say, and that the great tide of human progress flows on careless of their help or hindrance. So long as they insist upon the inspiration of the Bible, they are compelled to take the ground that slavery was once a divine inst.i.tution; they are forced to defend cruelties that would shock the heart of a savage, and besides, they are bound to teach the eternal horror of everlasting punishment.

They poison the minds of children; they deform the brain and pollute the imagination by teaching the frightful and infamous dogma of endless misery. Even the laws of Delaware shock the enlightened public of to-day. In that State they simply fine and imprison a man for expressing his honest thoughts; and yet, if the churches are right, G.o.d will d.a.m.n a man forever for the same offence. The brain and heart of our time cannot be satisfied with the ancient creeds. The Bible must be revised again. Most of the creeds must be blotted out. Humanity must take the place of theology.

Intellectual liberty must stand in every pulpit. There must be freedom in all the pews, and every human soul must have the right to express its honest thought.

--Washington correspondent, _Brooklyn Eagle_, March 19, 1881.

A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.*

[* Rev. Isaac J. Lansing of Meriden, Conn., recently denounced Col. Robert G. Ingersoll from the pulpit of the Meriden Methodist Church, and had the Opera House closed against him. This led a _Union_ reporter to show Colonel Ingersoll what Mr. Lansing had said and to interrogate him with the following result.]

_Question_. Did you favor the sending of obscene matter through the mails as alleged by the Rev. Mr. Lansing?

_Answer_. Of course not, and no honest man ever thought that I did. This charge is too malicious and silly to be answered. Mr.

Lansing knows better. He has made this charge many times and he will make it again.

_Question_. Is it a fact that there are thousands of clergymen in the country whom you would fear to meet in fair debate?

_Answer_. No; the fact is I would like to meet them all in one.

The pulpit is not burdened with genius. There a few great men engaged in preaching, but they are not orthodox. I cannot conceive that a Freethinker has anything to fear from the pulpit, except misrepresentation. Of course, there are thousands of ministers too small to discuss with--ministers who stand for nothing in the church--and with such clergymen I cannot afford to discuss anything.

If the Presbyterians, or the Congregationalists, or the Methodists would select some man, and endorse him as their champion, I would like to meet him in debate. Such a man I will pay to discuss with me. I will give him most excellent wages, and pay all the expenses at the discussion besides. There is but one safe course for the ministers--they must a.s.sert. They must declare. They must swear to it and stick to it, but they must not try to reason.

_Question_. You have never seen Rev. Mr. Lansing. To the people of Meriden and thereabouts he is well-known. Judging from what has been told you of his utterances and actions, what kind of a man would you take him to be?

_Answer_. I would take him to be a Christian. He talks like one, and he acts like one. If Christianity is right, Lansing is right.

If salvation depends upon belief, and if unbelievers are to be eternally d.a.m.ned, then an Infidel has no right to speak. He should not be allowed to murder the souls of his fellow-men. Lansing does the best he knows how. He thinks that G.o.d hates an unbeliever, and he tries to act like G.o.d. Lansing knows that he must have the right to slander a man whom G.o.d is to eternally d.a.m.n.

_Question_. Mr. Lansing speaks of you as a wolf coming with fangs sharpened by three hundred dollars a night to tear the lambs of his flock. What do you say to that?

_Answer_. All I have to say is, that I often get three times that amount, and sometimes much more. I guess his lambs can take care of themselves. I am not very fond of mutton anyway. Such talk Mr. Lansing ought to be ashamed of. The idea that he is a shepherd --that he is on guard--is simply preposterous. He has few sheep in his congregation that know as little on the wolf question as he does. He ought to know that his sheep support him--his sheep protect him; and without the sheep poor Lansing would be devoured by the wolves himself.

_Question_. Shall you sue the Opera House management for breach of contract?