The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 04 (of 12): Dresden Edition—LecturesIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 04 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Lectures
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
What is the remedy? Or, what can we think of--for do not imagine that I
think I know. It is an immense, an almost infinite, question, and all
we can do is to guess. You have heard a great deal lately upon the land
subject. Let me say a word or two upon that. In the first place I do not
want to take, and I would not take, an inch of land from any human being
that belonged to him. If we ever take it, we must pay for it--condemn
it and take it--do not rob anybody. Whenever any man advocates justice,
and robbery as the means, I suspect him.
No man should be allowed to own any land that he does not use. Everybody
knows that--I do not care whether he has thousands or millions. I have
owned a great deal of land, but I know just as well as I know I am
living that I should not be allowed to have it unless I use it. And why?
Don't you know that if people could bottle the air, they would? Don't
you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And
don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for
want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody.
I am just telling how it is. Now, the land belongs to the children of
Nature. Nature invites into this world every babe that is born. And
what would you think of me, for instance, to-night, if I had invited
you here--nobody had charged you anything, but you had been invited--and
when you got here you had found one man pretending to occupy a hundred
seats, another fifty, and another seventy-five, and thereupon you were
compelled to stand up--what would you think of the invitation? It seems
to me that every child of Nature is entitled to his share of the land,
and that he should not be compelled to beg the privilege to work the
soil, of a babe that happened to be born before him. And why do I say
this? Because it is not to our interest to have a few landlords and
millions of tenants.
The tenement house is the enemy of modesty, the enemy of virtue, the
enemy of patriotism.
Home is where the virtues grow. I would like to see the law so that
every home, to a small amount, should be free not only from sale for
debts, but should be absolutely free from taxation, so that every man
could have a home. Then we will have a nation of patriots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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