2d. It is a Crime against human progress to allow Reformers to be treated as Monomaniacs; for, who will dare to be true to the inspirations of the divinity within them, if the Pioneers of truth are thus liable to lose their personal liberty for life by so doing?
3d. It is Treason against the principles of our Government to treat opinions as Insanity, and to imprison for it, as our present laws allow.
4th. There always are those in every age who are opposed to every thing new, and if allowed, will persecute Reformers with the stigma of Insanity. This has been the fate of all Reformers, from the days of Christ—the Great Reformer—until the present age.
5th. Our Government, of all others, ought especially to guard, by legislation, the vital principle on which it is based, namely: individuality, which guarantees an individual right of opinion to all persons.
Therefore, gentlemen, protect your thinkers! by a law, against the charge of Monomania, and posterity shall bless our government, as a model government, and Massachusetts as the Pioneer State, in thus protecting individuality as the vital principle on which the highest development of humanity rests.
Bill No. 2.
No person shall be imprisoned, and treated as an insane person, except for irregularities of conduct, such as indicate that the individual is so lost to reason, as to render him an unaccountable moral agent.
REASONS.
Multitudes are now imprisoned, without the least evidence that reason is dethroned, as indicated by this test. And I am a representative of this class of prisoners; for, when Dr. McFarland was driven to give his reasons for regarding me as insane, on this basis, the only reason which he could name, after closely inspecting my conduct for three years, was, that I once “fell down stairs!”
I do insist upon it, gentlemen, that no person should be imprisoned without a just cause; for personal liberty is the most blessed boon of our existence and ought therefore to be reasonably guarded as an inalienable right. But it is not reasonably protected under our present legislation, while it allows the simple opinion of two doctors to imprison a person for life, without one proof in the conduct of the accused, that he is an unaccountable moral agent. We do not hang a person on the simple opinion that he is a murderer, but proof is required from the accused’s own actions, that he is guilty of the charge which forfeits his life. So the charge which forfeits our personal liberty ought to be proved from the individual’s own conduct, before imprisonment.