Thus the Association began to co-operate with the National League; and the latter soon had the support of more than sixty local organisations. The movement for establishing "Equal Rights in Religion" was uniting Liberal Christians, Jews, independent theists, Spiritualists, materialists, evolutionists, agnostics, and atheists. All were willing to call themselves "Freethinkers" and work together as they have never done since 1877. Then the League felt itself strong enough to call for "taxation of church property," "secularisation of public schools," "abrogation of Sabbatarian laws," and also for woman suffrage, as well as compulsory education throughout the United States. Steps were taken towards nominating Ingersoll on this platform for President of the Republic. These plans had to be abandoned; the agitation subsided; and the harmony between lovers of liberty from various standpoints was lost. A fatal difference of opinion was manifest in 1878, in regard to those Acts of Congress called "the Comstock laws." These statutes forbade sending obscene literature through the mails; and there had been more than a hundred recent convictions. Some of the prosecutions were said to have been prompted by religious bigotry; and there seems to have been unjustifiable examination of mail matter. The most important question was whether the laws ought to be enforced against newspapers and pamphlets about free love and marital tyranny, which were not meant to be indecent but really were so occasionally. A publisher in Massachusetts was sentenced in June, 1878, to two years of imprisonment for trying to mail such a pamphlet; but he was soon released. More severe punishment has been inflicted recently for similar offences. The majority of people in America and England favoured the exclusion by law of indecent literature from circulation; and this course has been considered necessary on account of the known frailty of human nature. The members of the Free Religious Association were willing to have the Comstock laws changed, but not repealed; and they voted, early in 1878, to take no part in what threatened to be an unfortunate controversy. The League, however, was divided on the question whether these laws ought to be amended or repealed. Abbot, Underwood, and other prominent members declared that literature ought to be excluded from the mails or admitted according as it was intentionally and essentially indecent, or only accidentally so. Thus Ingersoll said: "We want all nastiness suppressed for ever; but we also want the mails open to all decent people." Other members held that the Comstock laws ought to be repealed entirely, and no restriction put on the circulation of any literature except by public opinion. This must be admitted to agree with the principle that each one ought to have all the liberty consistent with the equal liberty of everyone else; but this application of the theory cannot be considered politic in agitating for religious freedom.