Address to the Jury.
* Within thirty miles of New York, in the city of
Morristown, New Jersey, a man was put on trial yesterday for
distributing a pamphlet argument against the infallibility
of the Bible. The crime which the Indictment alleges Is
Blasphemy, for which the statutes of New Jersey provide a
penalty of two hundred dollars fine, or twelve months
imprisonment, or both. It is the first case of the kind ever
tried in New Jersey, although the law dates back to colonial
days. Charles B. Reynolds is the man on trial, and the State
of New Jersey, through the Prosecuting Attorney of Morris
County, is the prosecutor. The Circuit Court, Judge Francis
Child, assisted by County Judges Munson and Quimby, sit upon
the case. Prosecutor Wilder W. Cutler represents the State,
and Robert G. Ingersoll appears for the defendant.
Mr. Reynolds went to Boonton last summer to hold "free-
thought" meetings. Announcing his purpose without any
flourish, he secured a piece of ground, pitched a tent upon
it, and invited the towns-people to come and hear him. It
was understood that he had been a Methodist minister: that,
finding it impossible to reconcile his mind to some of the
historical parts of the Bible, and unable to accept it in
its entirety as a moral guide, he left the church and set
out to proclaim his conclusions. The churches in Boonton
arrayed themselves against him. The Catholics and Methodists
were especially active. Taking this opposition as an excuse,
one element of the town invaded his tent. They pelted
Reynolds with ancient eggs and vegetables. They chopped away
the guy ropes of the tent and slashed the canvas with their
knives. When the tent collapsed, the crowd rushed for the
speaker to inflict further punishment by plunging him in the
duck pond They rummaged the wrecked tent, but in vain. He
had made his way ont in the confusion and was no more seen
in Boonton.
But what he had said did not leave Boonton with him, and the
pamphlets he had distributed were read by many who probably
would not have looked between their covers had his visit
been attended by no unusual circumstances. Boonton was still
agitated up on the subject when Mr. Reynolds appeared in
Morristown. This time he did not try to hold meetings, but
had his pamphlets with him.
Mr. Reynolds appeared in Morristown with the pamphlets on
October thirteenth. A Boonton delegation was there,
clamoring for his indictment for blasphemy. The Grand Jury
heard of his visit and found two indictments against him;
one for blasphemy at
Boonton and the second for blasphemy at Morristown. He
furnished a five hundred dollar bond to appear for trial. On
account of Colonel Ingersoll's throat troubles the case was
adjourned several times through the winter and until Monday
last, when it was set peremptorily for trial yesterday.
The public feeling excited at Boonton was overshadowed by
that at Morristown and the neighboring region. For six
months no topic was so interesting to the public as this. It
monopolized attention at the stores, and became a fruitful
subject of gossip in social and church circles. Under such
circumstances it was to be expected that everybody who could
spare the time would go to court yesterday. Lines of people
began to climb the court house hill early in the morning. At
the hour of opening court the room set apart for the trial
was packed, and distaffs had to be stationed at the foot of
the stairs to keep back those who were not early enough.
From nine thirty to eleven o'clock the crowd inside talked
of blasphemy in all the phases suggested by this case, and
the outsiders waited patiently on the lawn and steps and
along the dusty approaches to the gray building.
Eleven o'clock brought the train from New York and on it
Colonel Ingersoll. His arrival at the court house with his
clerk opened a new chapter in the day's gossip. The event
was so absorbing indeed, that the crowd failed entirely to
notice an elderly man wearing a black frock snit, a silk
hat, with an army badge pinned to his coat, and looking like
a merchant of means, who entered the court house a few
minutes behind the famous lawyer. The last comer was the
defendant.
All was ready for the case. Within five minutes five jurors
were in the box. Then Colonel Ingersoll asked what were his
rights about challenges. He was informed that he might make
six peremptory challenges and must challenge before the
jurors took their seats. The only disqualification the Court
would recognize would be the inability of a juror to change
his opinion in spite of evidence. Colonel Ingersoll induced
the Court to let him examine the five in the box and
promptly ejected two Presbyterians.
Thereafter Colonel Ingersoll examined every juror as soon as
presented. He asked particularly about the nature of each
man's prejudice, if he had one. To a juror who did not know
that he understood the word, the Colonel replied: "I may not
define the word legally, but my own idea is that a man is
prejudiced when he has made up his mind on a case without
knowing anything about it." This juror thought that he came
under that category.
Presbyterians had a rather hard time with the examiner.
After twenty men had been examined and the defence had
exercised five of its peremptory challenges, the following
were sworn as jurymen. * * * *
The jury having been sworn, Prosecutor Cutler announced that
he would try only the indictment for the offence in
Morristown. He said that Reynolds was charged with
distributing pamphlets containing matter claimed to be
blasphemous under the law. If the charge could be proved he
asked a verdict of guilty. Then he called sixteen towns-
people, to most of whom Reynolds had given a pamphlet.
Colonel Ingersoll tried to get the Presbyterian witnesses to
say that they had read the pamphlet. Not one of them
admitted it. Further than this he attempted no
cross-examination.
"I do not know that I shall have any witnesses one way or
the other," Colonel Ingersoll said, rising to suggest a
recess. "Perhaps after dinner I may feel like making a few
remarks."
"There will be great disappointment if you do not" Judge
Child responded, in a tone that meant a word for himself as
well as for the other listeners. The spectators nodded
approval to this sentiment. At 4:20 o'clock Col. Ingersoll
having spoken since 2 o'clock, Judge Child adjourned court
until this morning.
As Colonel Ingersoll left the room a throng pressed after
him to offer congratulations. One old man said: "Colonel
Ingersoll I am a Presbyterian pastor, but I must say that
was the noblest speech in defence of liberty I ever heard!
Your hand, sir; your hand,"—The Times, New York, May
20,1887.
GENTLEMEN of the Jury: I regard this as one of the most important cases that can be submitted to a jury. It is not a case that involves a little property, neither is it one that involves simply the liberty of one man. It involves the freedom of speech, the intellectual liberty of every citizen of New Jersey.
The question to be tried by you is whether a man has the right to express his honest thought; and for that reason there can be no case of greater importance submitted to a jury. And it may be well enough for me, at the outset, to admit that there could be no case in which I could take a greater—a deeper interest. For my part, I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.
I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips—to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain. A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men. If you have the right to work with your hands and to gather the harvest for yourself and your children, have you not a right to cultivate your brain? Have you not the right to read, to observe, to investigate—and when you have so read and so investigated, have you not the right to reap that field? And what is it to reap that field? It is simply to express what you have ascertained—simply to give your thoughts to your fellow-men.
If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves. If you have not the right to express your opinions, if the defendant has not this right, then no man ever walked beneath the blue of heaven that had the right to express his thought. If others claim the right, where did they get it? How did they happen to have it, and how did you happen to be deprived of it? Where did a church or a nation get that right?
Are we not all children of the same Mother? Are we not all compelled to think, whether we wish to or not? Can you help thinking as you do? When you look out upon the woods, the fields,—when you look at the solemn splendors of the night—these things produce certain thoughts in your mind, and they produce them necessarily. No man can think as he desires. No man controls the action of his brain, any more than he controls the action of his heart. The blood pursues its old accustomed ways in spite of you. The eyes see, if you open them, in spite of you. The ears hear, if they are unstopped, without asking your permission. And the brain thinks in spite of you. Should you express that thought? Certainly you should, if others express theirs. You have exactly the same right. He who takes it from you is a robber.
For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument. You can stand with the lash over a man, or you can stand by the prison door, or beneath the gallows, or by the stake, and say to this man: "Recant or the lash descends, the prison door is locked upon you, the rope is put about your neck, or the torch is given to the fagot." And so the man recants. Is he convinced? Not at all. Have you produced a new argument? Not the slightest. And yet the ignorant bigots of this world have been trying for thousands of years to rule the minds of men by brute force. They have endeavored to improve the mind by torturing the flesh—to spread religion with the sword and torch. They have tried to convince their brothers by putting their feet in iron boots, by putting fathers, mothers, patriots, philosophers and philanthropists in dungeons. And what has been the result? Are we any nearer thinking alike to-day than we were then?
No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame. And yet every church that ever was established commenced in the minority, and while it was in the minority advocated free speech—every one. John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church, while he lived in France, wrote a book on religious toleration in order to show that all men had an equal right to think; and yet that man afterward, clothed in a little authority, forgot all his sentiments about religious liberty, and had poor Servetus burned at the stake, for differing with him on a question that neither of them knew anything about. In the minority, Calvin advocated toleration—in the majority, he practiced murder.
I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike, he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever—why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan—if he wanted us all to believe alike?