The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—PoliticalIngersoll, Robert Green
History
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Political
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Chauncey M. Depew, on leaving the hall, remarked that it was
the greatest speech he ever heard, and numbers of old
campaigners were equally enthusiastic. At its conclusion,
the reception which Mr. Ingersoll held on the platform
lasted over half-an-hour, and when finally Commissioner
Wheeler piloted him through the crowd to his coach, three or
four hundred of the audience followed and gave him lusty
cheers as he drove off.--New York Tribune, September
11,1876.
HAYES CAMPAIGN.
1876.
I AM just on my way home from the grand old State of Maine, and there
has followed me a telegraphic dispatch which I will read to you. If it
were not good, you may swear I would not read it: "Every Congressional
district, every county in Maine, Republican by a large majority. The
victory is overwhelming, and the majority will exceed 15,000." That
dispatch is signed by that knight-errant of political chivalry, James G.
Blaine.
I suppose we are all stockholders in the great corporation known as the
United States of America, and as such stockholders we have a right to
vote the way we think will best subserve our own interests. Each one has
certain stock in this Government, whether he is rich, or whether he is
poor, and the poor man has the same interest in the United States of
America that the richest man in it has. It is our duty, conscientiously
and honestly, to hear the argument upon both sides of the political
question, and then go and vote conscientiously for the side that we
believe will best preserve our interest in the United States of America.
Two great parties are before you now asking your support--the Democratic
party and the Republican party. One wishes to be kept in power, the
other wishes to have a chance once more at the Treasury of the United
States. The Democratic party is probably the hungriest organization that
ever wandered over the desert of political disaster in the history of
the world. There never was, in all probability, a political stomach
so thoroughly empty, or an appetite so outrageously keen as the one
possessed by the Democratic party. The Democratic party has been howling
like a pack of wolves looking in with hungry and staring eyes at the
windows of the National Capitol, and scratching at the doors of the
White House. They have been engaged in these elegant pursuits for
sixteen long, weary years. Occasionally they have retired to some
convenient eminence and lugubriously howled about the Constitution.
The Democratic party comes and asks for your vote, not on account of
anything it has done, not on account of anything it has accomplished,
but on account of what it promises to do; the Democratic party can make
just as good a promise as any other party in the world, and it will
come farther from fulfilling it than any other party on this globe. The
Republican party having held this Government for sixteen years, proposes
to hold it for four years more. The Republican party comes to you with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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