"After the trial Colonel Ingersoll interposed, and endeavored to get a pardon for Mr. Bennett, who was held in Ludlow street jail pending President Hayes's reply. The man who occupied the President's office promised to pardon the Infidel editor; then he went back on his word, and Mr. Bennett served his term of imprisonment.
"Then preachers opened the sluiceways of vituperation and billingsgate upon Colonel Ingersoll for having interceded for a man convicted of mailing obscene literature. The charges were as infamously false then as they are now, and to show it, it is only necessary to quote Colonel Ingersoll's words during the year or two succeeding, when the Freethinkers and the Christians were not only opposing each other vigorously, but the Freethinkers themselves were divided on the question. In 1879, while Mr. Bennett was in prison, a correspondent of the Nashville, Tenn., Banner said that the National Liberal League and Colonel Ingersoll were in favor of disseminating obscene literature. To this Colonel Ingersoll replied in a letter to a friend:
"1417 G St., Washington, Aug. 21, 1879.
"'My Dear Sir: The article in the Nashville Banner by "J. L." is utterly and maliciously false.
"'A petition was sent to Congress praying for the repeal or modification of certain postal laws, to the end that the freedom of conscience and of the press should not be abridged.
"'Nobody holds in greater contempt than I the writers, publishers, or dealers in obscene literature. One of my objections to the Bible is that it contains hundreds of grossly obscene passages not fit to be read by any decent man, thousands of passages, in my judgment, calculated to corrupt the minds of youth. I hope the time will soon come when the good sense of the American people will demand a Bible with all obscene passages left out.
"'The only reason a modification of the postal laws is necessary is that at present, under color of those laws, books and pamphlets are excluded from the mails simply because they are considered heterodox and blasphemous. In other words, every man should be allowed to write, publish, and send through the mails his thoughts upon any subject, expressed in a decent and becoming manner. As to the propriety of giving anybody authority to overhaul mails, break seals, and read private correspondence, that is another question.
"'Every minister and every layman who charges me with directly or indirectly favoring the dissemination of anything that is impure, retails what he knows to be a wilful and malicious lie. I remain, Yours truly,
"'R. G. Ingersoll.'
"Three weeks after this letter was written the National Liberal League held its third annual Congress at Cincinnati. Colonel Ingersoll was chairman of the committee on resolutions and platform and unfinished business of the League. One of the subjects to be dealt with was these Comstock laws. The following are Colonel Ingersoll's remarks and the resolutions he presented: