The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII.: InterviewsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII.: Interviews
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
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 God 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?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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