The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

I am going with the Republican party because it is going my way; but if it ever turns to the right or left, I intend to go straight ahead.

In every government there is something that ought to be preserved, in every government there are many things that ought to be destroyed. Every good man, every patriot, every lover of the human race, wishes to preserve the good and destroy the bad; and every one in this audience who wishes to preserve the good will go with that section of our common country—with that party in our country that he honestly believes will preserve the good and destroy the bad. It takes a great deal of trouble to raise a good Republican. It is a vast deal of labor. The Republican party is the fruit of all ages—of self-sacrifice and devotion. The Republican party is born of every good thing that was ever done in this world. The Republican party is the result of all martyrdom, of all heroic blood shed for the right. It is the blossom and fruit of the great world's best endeavor. In order to make a Republican you have to have schoolhouses. You have to have newspapers and magazines. A good Republican is the best fruit of civilization, of all there is of intelligence, of art, of music and of song. If you want to make Democrats, let them alone. The Democratic party is the settlings of this country. Nobody hoes weeds. Nobody takes especial pains to raise dog-fennel, and yet it grows under the very hoof of travel, The seeds are sown by accident and gathered by chance. But if you want to raise wheat and corn you must plough the ground. You must defend and you must harvest the crop with infinite patience and toil. It is precisely that way—if you want to raise a good Republican you must work. If you wish to raise a Democrat give him wholesome neglect. The Democratic party flatters the vices of mankind. That party says to the ignorant man, "You know enough." It says to the vicious man, "You are good enough."

The Republican party says, "You must be better next year than you are this." A Republican takes a man by the collar and says, "You must do your best, you must climb the infinite hill of human progress as long as you live." Now and then one gets tired. He says, "I have climbed enough and so much better than I expected to do that I do not wish to travel any farther." Now and then one gets tired and lets go all hold, and he rolls down to the very bottom, and as he strikes the mud he springs upon his feet transfigured, and says: "Hurrah for Hancock!"

There are things in this Government that I wish to preserve, and there are things that I wish to destroy; and in order to convince you that you ought to go the way that I am going: it is only fair that I give to you my reasons. This is a Republic founded upon intelligence and the patriotism of the people, and in every Republic it is absolutely necessary that there should be free speech. Free speech is the gem of the human soul. Words are the bodies of thought, and liberty gives to those words wings, and the whole intellectual heavens are filled with light. In a Republic every individual tongue has a right to the general ear. In a Republic every man has the right to give his reasons for the course he pursues to all his fellow-citizens, and when you say that a man shall not speak, you also say that others shall not hear. When you say a man shall not express his honest thought you say his fellow-citizens shall be deprived of honest thoughts; for of what use is it to allow the attorney for the defendant to address the jury if the jury has been bought? Of what use is it to allow the jury to bring in a verdict of "not guilty," if the defendant is to be hung by a mob? I ask you to-night, is not every solitary man here in favor of free speech? Is there a solitary Democrat here who dares say he is not in favor of free speech? In which part of this country are the lips of thought free—in the South or in the North? Which section of our country can you trust the inestimable gem of free speech with? Can you trust it to the gentlemen of Mississippi or to the gentlemen of Massachusetts? Can you trust it to Alabama or to New York? Can you trust it to the South or can you trust it to the great and splendid North? Honor bright—honor bright, is there any freedom of speech in the South? There never was and there is none to-night—and let me tell you why.

They had the institution of human slavery in the South, which could not be defended at the bar of public reason. It was an institution that could not be defended in the high forum of human conscience. No man could stand there and defend the right to rob the cradle—none to defend the right to sell the babe from the breast of the agonized mother—none to defend the claim that lashes on a bare back are a legal tender for labor performed. Every man that lived upon the unpaid labor of another knew in his heart that he was a thief. And for that reason he did not wish to discuss that question. Thereupon the institution of slavery said, "You shall not speak; you shall not reason," and the lips of free thought were manacled. You know it. Every one of you. Every Democrat knows it as well as every Republican. There never was free speech in the South.

And what has been the result? And allow me to admit right here, because I want to be fair, there are thousands and thousands of most excellent people in the South—thousands of them. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands there who would like to vote the Republican ticket. And whenever there is free speech there and whenever there is a free ballot there, they will vote the Republican ticket. I say again, there are hundreds of thousands of good people in the South; but the institution of human slavery prevented free speech, and it is a splendid fact in nature that you cannot put chains upon the limbs of others without putting corresponding manacles upon your own brain. When the South enslaved the negro, it also enslaved itself, and the result was an intellectual desert. No book has been produced, with one exception, that has added to the knowledge of mankind; no paper, no magazine, no poet, no philosopher, no philanthropist, was ever raised in that desert. Now and then some one protested against that infamous institution, and he came as near being a philosopher as the society in which he lived permitted. Why is it that New England, a rock-clad land, blossoms like a rose? Why is it that New York is the Empire State of the great Union? I will tell you. Because you have been permitted to trade in ideas. Because the lips of speech have been absolutely free for twenty years.

We never had free speech in any State in this Union until the Republican party was born. That party was rocked in the cradle of intellectual liberty, and that is the reason I say it is the best party that ever existed in the wide, wide world. I want to preserve free speech, and, as an honest man, I look about me and I say, "How can I best preserve it?" By giving it to the South or North; to the Democracy or to the Republican party? And I am bound, as an honest man, to say free speech is safest with its earliest defenders. Where is there such a thing as a Republican mob to prevent the expression of an honest thought? Where? The people of the South are allowed to come to the North; they are allowed to express their sentiments upon every stump in the great East, the great West, and in the great Middle States; they go to Maine, to Vermont, and to all our States, and they are allowed to speak, and we give them a respectful hearing, and the meanest thing we do is to answer their arguments.

I say to-night that we ought to have the same liberty to discuss these questions in the South that Southerners have in the North. And I say more than that, the Democrats of the North ought to compel the Democrats of the South to treat the Republicans of the South as well as the Republicans of the North treat them. We treat the Democrats well in the North; we treat them like gentlemen in the North; and yet they go into partnership with the Democracy of the South, knowing that the Democracy of the South will not treat Republicans in that section with fairness. A Democrat ought to be ashamed of that.

If my friends will not treat other people as well as the friends of the other people treat me, I'll swap friends.

First, then, I am in favor of free speech, and I am going with that section of my country that believes in free speech; I am going with that party that has always upheld that sacred right. When you stop free speech, when you say that a thought shall die in the womb of the brain,—why, it would have the same effect upon the intellectual world that to stop springs at their sources would have upon the physical world. Stop the springs at their sources and they cease to gurgle, the streams cease to murmur, and the great rivers cease rushing to the embrace of the sea. So you stop thought. Stop thought in the brain in which it is born, and theory dies; and the great ocean of knowledge to which all should be permitted to contribute, and from which all should be allowed to draw, becomes a vast desert of ignorance.