Another Ingersoll in the Field.

The Talmage-Ingersoll controversy has called out the following letter from the colonel’s brother in defense of his father and the colonel himself:

Rev. T. D. Talmage, D.D.

Sir: — I have before me a copy of the Cincinnati “Enquirer” containing the report of a sermon delivered by you on the 5th instant, upon the “Meanness of Infidelity.” In the course of your remarks you say that you had just received a letter from some one informing you that the Rev. John Ingersoll, father of R. G. Ingersoll and myself, “was abstemious to a fault, and the family suffered accordingly. The children were commanded to eat, drink, and dress sparingly. He never spoken kind word of his wife, who was a noble Christian woman, nor of his children, within the knowledge of persons now living here, who were familiar with the family. At last the mother died. She was cared for by friends in her sickness, and on the day of her interment gentle hands carried her form, and rested it for a time on the catafalque. Mr. Ingersoll, to the astonishment of all present, deliberately removed his cravat and gloves, stepped on the rostrum, and delivered a eulogy over the body. He attempted to extol her virtues and panegyrize her conduct. It was the first time he had ever been known to speak well of her in public.”

Now, reverend sir, “will you be kind enough to tell your informant, for me, that he or she is a malignantly cruel, heartless, and infamous liar? Our father was poor; I will not deny it. In the, days of my childhood a minister was forced to practise strict economy to support a family and educate his children upon a salary of $500 a year. We had abundance to eat and were well clothed, and certainly no man ever better enjoyed ministering to the wants of his family than did our loved and honored father. I believe him to have been an eminently good and conscientious man — I do not say faultless. As for Robert, I will say he was as good and obedient a boy as I ever knew, but all this is neither here nor there. He denies that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and gives his reasons. Here you take issue with him. Now, is it not possible to successfully combat his errors without opening the tomb and spattering with calumny our loved and honored dead? Speaking of your father and mother you say: “Would it not have been debasing in me to hook the horses to the ploughshare of contempt to turn up the mould of their graves?” True. Now let me ask you if you don’t think that the Golden Rule requires you to unhook your horses before you ruthlessly turn up the sacred dust that hides from the light of day our father’s snow-white hair. But “Ingersol assails the belief of the father.” Well, sir, had your father been an infidel, would you know, entertaining the views you do, combat his opinions? That would probably be a very different thing. Ingersoll says he can not believe that God, the father of us all, ever commanded the Jews to wage wars of extermination against their neighbors, and was delighted at the sight of a babe’s blood trickling down the handle of a Jewish spear. Moses said when a woman gave birth to a son thirty-three days were necessary to purify her, but, if she gave birth to a daughter, sixty-six days were necessary. Ingersoll says that looks to him like nonsense, and he really can not believe that God ever ordered any such thing. He says he cannot believe that God, who winked at polygamy and established slavery, ever ordered a man to be pounded to death with stones simply for picking up sticks on the Sabbath day. He says he can not believe that God ever gave express permission to one part of his family to sell diseased meat to the other.

When David says of somebody, “Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children,” he says it is impossible for him to believe that either the words or thought were inspired by the good God. Now, if you will draw your theologic belt one hole tighter and answer these things, you will do everybody a favor. You ask Ingersoll to retire to his chamber, lock his door, and read the fourteenth chapter of John. It is good reading. Let me ask you to read the fifteenth Psalm: “Lord, who shall abide be Thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in Thy holy hill?” “He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor death evil to his neighbor, nor taketh ups reproach against his neighbor.” With all due respect, I am yours,

John L. Ingersol.

Prospect Hill, Waukesha Co., Wis.

Legislation: Its Origin and Purpose.

 [From Lysander Spooner’s “Natural Law.”]

Through all historic times, wherever any people have advanced beyond the savage state and have learned to increase their means of subsistence by the cultivation of the soil, a greater or less number of them have associated and organized themselves as robbers to plunder and enslave all others who had either accumulated any property that could be seized, or had shown by their labor that they could be made to contribute to the support or pleasure of those who should enslave them.

These bands of robbers, small in number at first, have increased their power by uniting with each other, inventing warlike weapons, disciplining themselves, and perfecting their organizations as military forces, and dividing their plunder (including their captives) among themselves, either in such proportions as have been previously agreed on, or in such it their leaders (always desirous to increase the number of their followers) should prescribe.

The success of these bands of robbers was an easy thing, for the reason that those whom they plundered and enslaved were comparatively defenceless; being scattered thinly over the country; engaged wholly in trying, by rude implements and heavy labor, to extort a subsistence from the soil; having no weapons of war, other than sticks and stones; having no military discipline or organization, and no means of concentrating their forces, or acting in concert, when suddenly attacked. Under these circumstances the only alternative left them for saving even their lives, or the lives of their families, was to yield up not only the crops they had gathered and the lands they had cultivated, but themselves and their families also as slaves.

Thenceforth their fate was, as slaves, to cultivate for others the lands they had before cultivated for themselves. Being driven constantly to their labor, wealth slowly increased; but all went into the hands of their tyrants.

These tyrants, living solely on plunder and on the labor of their slaves, and applying all their energies to the seizure of still more plunder and the enslavement of still other defenceless persons; increasing, too, their numbers, perfecting their organizations, and multiplying their weapons of war, they extend their conquests until, in order to hold what they have already got, it becomes necessary for them to act systematically, and co-operate with each other in holding their slaves in subjection.

But all this they can do only by establishing what they call a government, and making what they call laws.

All the great governments of the world — those now existing as well as those that have passed away — have been of this character. They have been mere bands of robbers, who have associated for purposes of plunder, conquest, and the enslavement of their fellow men. And their laws, as they have called them, have been only such agreements as they have found it necessary to enter into in order to maintain their organizations and act together in plundering and enslaving others and in securing to each his agreed share of the spoils.

All these laws have had no more real obligation than have the agreements which brigands, bandits, and pirates find it necessary to enter into with each other for the more successful accomplishment of their crimes and the more peaceable division of their spoils.

Thus substantially all the legislation of the world has had its origin in the desires of one class of persons to plunder and enslave others, and hold them as property.

In process of time, the robber, or slave-holding, class — who had seized all the lands and held all the means of creating wealth — began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves and making them profitable was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the landholding close — their former owners — for just what the latter-might choose to give them.

Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands or other property and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no alternative — to save themselves from starvation — but to sell their labor to the landholders in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that.

These liberated slaves, as they were called, were now scarcely less slaves than they were before. Their means of subsistence were perhaps even more precarious than when each had his own owner, who had an interest to preserve his life. They were liable, at the caprice or interest of the land-holders, to be thrown out of home, employment, and the opportunity of even earning a subsistence by their labor. They were, therefore, in large numbers, driven to the necessity of begging, stealing, or starving, and became, of course, dangerous to the property and quite of their masters.

The consequence was that these late owners found it necessary, for their own safety and the safety of their property, to organize themselves more perfectly, as a government and make laws keeping these dangerous people in subjection; that is, laws fixing the prices at-which they should be, compelled to labor, and also prescribing fearful punishments, even death itself, for such thefts and trespasses as they were driven to commit as their only means of saving themselves from starvation.

These laws have continued in force for hundreds, and, in some countries, for thousands of years; and are in force to-day, in greater or was severity, in nearly all the countries on the globe.

The purpose and effect of these laws have been to maintain, in the hands of the robber, or slave-holding class, a monopoly of all lands and, as far as possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great body of laborers in such a state of poverty and dependence as would compel them to sell their labor to their tyrants for the lowest prices at which life could be sustained.

The result of all this is that the little wealth there is in the world is all in the hands of a few,— that is, in the hands of the law-making, slave-holding class, who are now as much slave-holders in spirit as they ever were, but who accomplish their purposes by means of the laws they make for keeping the laborers in subjection and dependence, instead of each one’s owning his individual slaves as so many chattels.

Thus the whole business of legislation, which has now grown to such gigantic proportions, had its origin in the conspiracies which have always existed among the few for the purpose of holding the many in subjection and extorting from them their labor and all the profits of their labor.

And the real motives and spirit which lie at the foundation of all legislation — notwithstanding all the pretences and disguises by which they attempt to hide themselves — are the same to-day as they always have been. The whole purpose of this legislation is simply to keep one class of men in subordination and servitude to another.

What, then, is legislation? It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of absolute, irresponsible dominion over all other men whom they can subject to their power. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to subject all other men to their will and their service. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to abolish outright all the natural rights, all the natural liberty of all other men; to make all other men their slaves; to arbitrarily dictate to all other men what they may and may not do, what they may and may not have, what they may and may not be. It is, in short, the assumption of a right to banish the principle of human rights, the principle of justice itself, from off the earth, and set up their own personal will, pleasure, and interest in its place. All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as human legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.

Church and State.

Liberals complain of the oppressions of the church; they say, and truly, that the church is the favorite or the State. But they forget that, were it not for the State, the church would be powerless for evil in this direction. Behind the exemption of church property, the Sunday laws, Bible in the schools, etc. stands the State, enforcing by the power of every bayonet these unjust discrimination. The State has ever been the executive arm of the church. Her judges, her sheriffs, her jailers have sentenced, have hung, racked, burned, exiled, and imprisoned the sentenced heretics in all ages. To-day she forces upon us the morality of the church, and our refusal to conform to the standard ecclesiastic is tantamount to rebellion against the State. The latter power stands pledged to compel us to speak and act in church channels. Let us open our eyes and take a square look at the work before us.

E. C. Walker.

The Andre Monument.

The following resolutions were passed at a recent meeting of the Jersey City group of the International Working People’s Association:

We resolve that we protect against the illegal arrest and imprisonment of citizen Hendrix on a charge of defining a monument erected by traitor Field in memory of spy Andre.
We further resolve that it is a blow aimed at the rights of freemen more deadly than the cannon balls of George the Third.
We further resolve that this dastardly outrage in arresting citizen Hendrix on such charge is an insult to the Rebels of 1776 and to the freemen of to-day.
We further resolve, in the name of Justice and Solidarity, to give our moral and material support to citizen Hendrix or any other person whomsoever who may be imbued with such a spirit of patriotism.