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                The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

                     Brooklyn Eagle, 1881.

     Question. I understand, Colonel Ingersoll, that you have been
indicted in the State of Delaware for the crime of blasphemy?

     Answer. Well, not exactly indicted. The Judge, who, I believe,
is the Chief Justice of the State, dedicated the new court-house at
Wilmington to the service of the Lord, by a charge to the grand
jury, in which he almost commanded them to bring in a bill of
indictment against me, for what he was pleased to call the crime of
blasphemy. Now, as a matter of fact, there can be no crime
committed by man against God, provided always that a correct
definition of the Deity has been given by the orthodox churches.
They say that he is infinite. If so, he is conditionless. I can
injure a man by changing his conditions. Take from a man water, and
he perishes of thirst; take from him air, and he suffocates; he may
die from too much, or too little heat. That is because he is a
conditioned being. But if God is conditionless, he cannot in any
way be affected by what anybody else may do; and, consequently, a
sin against God is as impossible as a sin against the principle of
the lever or inclined plane. This crime called blasphemy was
invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able
to take care of themselves. Blasphemy is a kind of breastwork
behind which hypocrisy has crouched for thousands of years.
Injustice is the only blasphemy that can be committed, and justice
is the only true worship. Man can sin against man, but not against
God. But even if man could sin against God, it has always struck me
that an infinite being would be entirely able to take care of
himself without the assistance of a Chief Justice. Men have always
been violating the rights of men, under the plea of defending the 
rights of God, and nothing, for ages, was so perfectly delightful
to the average Christian as to gratify his revenge, and get God in
his debt at the same time. Chief Justice Comegys has taken this
occasion to lay up for himself what he calls treasures in heaven,
and on the last great day he will probably rely on a certified copy
of this charge. The fact that he thinks the Lord needs help
satisfies me that in that particular neighborhood I am a little
ahead.

     The fact is, I never delivered but one lecture in Delaware.
That lecture, however, had been preceded by a Republican stump
speech; and, to tell you the truth, I imagine that the stump speech
is what a Yankee would call the heft of the offence. It is really
hard for me to tell whether I have blasphemed the Deity or the 

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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

Democracy. Of course I have no personal feeling whatever against
the Judge. In fact he has done me a favor. He has called the
attention of the civilized world to certain barbarian laws that
disfigure and disgrace the statute books of most of the States.
These laws were passed when our honest ancestors were burning
witches, trading Quaker children to the Barbados for rum and
molasses, branding people upon the forehead, boring their tongues
with hot irons, putting one another in the pillory, and, generally,
in the name of God, making their neighbors as uncomfortable as
possible. We have outgrown these laws without repealing them. They
are, as a matter of fact, in most communities actually dead; but in
some of the States, like Delaware, I suppose they could be
enforced, though there might be trouble in selecting twelve men,
even in Delaware, without getting one man broad enough, sensible
enough, and honest enough, to do justice. I hardly think it would
be possible in any State to select a jury in the ordinary way that
would convict any person charged with what is commonly known as
blasphemy.

     All the so-called Christian churches have accused each other
of being blasphemers, in turn. The Catholics denounced the
Presbyterians as blasphemers, the Presbyterians denounced the
Baptists; the Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the Catholics, all
united in denouncing the Quakers, and they all together denounced
the Unitarians -- called them blasphemers because they did not
acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ -- the Unitarians only
insisting that three infinite beings were not necessary, that one
infinite being could do all the business, and that the other two
were absolutely useless. This was called blasphemy.

     Then all the churches united to call the Universalists
blasphemers. I can remember when a Universalist was regarded with
a thousand times more horror than an infidel is to-day. There is
this strange thing about the history of theology -- nobody has ever
been charged with blasphemy who thought God bad. For instance, it
never would have excited any theological hatred if a man had
insisted that God would finally damn everybody. Nearly all heresy
has consisted in making God better than the majority in the
churches thought him to be. the orthodox Christian never will
forgive the Universalist for saying that God is too good to damn
anybody eternally. Now, all these sects have charged each other
with blasphemy, without anyone of them knowing really what
blasphemy is. I suppose they have occasionally been honest, because
they have mostly been ignorant. It is said that Torquemada used to
shed tears over the agonies of his victims and that he recommended
slow burning, not because he wished to inflict pain, but because he
really desired to give the gentleman or lady he was burning a
chance to repent of his or her sins, and make his or her peace with
God previous to becoming a cinder.

     The root, foundation, germ and cause of nearly all religious
persecution is the idea that some certain belief is necessary to
salvation. If orthodox Christians are right in this idea, then
persecution of all heretics and infidels is a duty. If I have the
right to defend my body from attack, surely I should have a like
right to defend my soul. Under our laws I could kill any man who
was endeavoring, for example, to take the life of my child. How 


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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

much more would I be justified in killing any wretch who was
endeavoring to convince my child of the truth of a doctrine which,
if believed, would result in the eternal damnation of that child's
soul?

     If the Christian religion, as it is commonly understood, is
true, no infidel should be allowed to live; every heretic should be
hunted from the wide world as you would hunt a wild beast. They
should not be allowed to speak, they should not be allowed to
poison the minds of women and children; in other words, they should
not be allowed to empty heaven and fill hell. The reason I have
liberty in this country is because the Christians of this country
do not believe their doctrine. The passage from the Bible, "Go ye
into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,"
coupled with the assurance that, "Whosoever believeth and is
baptized shall be saved, and whoso believeth not shall he damned,"
is the foundation of most religious persecution. Every word in that
passage has been fire and fagot, whip and sword, chain and dungeon.
That one passage has probably caused more agony among men, women
and children, than all the passages of all other books that were
ever printed. Now, this passage was not in the book of Mark when
originally written, but was put there many years after the
gentleman who evolved the book of Mark from his inner
consciousness, had passed away. It was put there by the church --
that is to say, by hypocrisy and priestly craft, to bind the
consciences of men and force them to come under ecclesiastical and
spiritual power; and that passage has been received and believed,
and been made binding by law in most countries ever since.

     What would you think of a law compelling a man to admire
Shakespeare, or calling it blasphemy to laugh at Hamlet? Why is not
a statute necessary to uphold the reputation of Raphael or of
Michael Angelo? Is it possible that God cannot write a book good
enough and great enough and grand enough not to excite the laughter
of his children? Is it possible that he is compelled to have his
literary reputation supported by the State of Delaware?

     There is another very strange thing about this business.
Admitting that the Bible is the work of God, it is not any more his
work than are the sun, the moon and the stars or the earth, and if
for disbelieving this Bible we are to be damned forever, we ought
to be equally damned for a mistake in geology or astronomy. The
idea of allowing a man to go to heaven who swears that the earth is
flat, and damning a fellow who thinks it is round, but who has his
honest doubts about Joshua, seems to me to be perfectly absurd. It
seems to me that in this view of it, it is just as necessary to be
right on the subject of the equator as on the doctrine of infant
baptism.

     Question. What was in your judgment the motive of Judge
Comegys? Is he a personal enemy of yours? Have you ever met him?
Have you any idea what reason he had for attacking you?

     Answer. I do not know the gentleman, personally. Outside of
the political reason I have intimated, I do not know why he
attacked me. I once delivered a lecture entitled "What must we do
to be Saved?" in the city of Wilmington, and in that lecture I 


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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

proceeded to show, or at least tried to show, that Matthew, Mark
and Luke knew nothing about Christianity, as it is understood in
Delaware; and I also endeavored to show that all men have an equal
right to think, and that a man is only under obligations to be
honest with himself, and with all men, and that he is not
accountable for the amount of mind that he has been endowed with --
otherwise it might be Judge Comegys himself would be damned -- but
that he is only accountable for the use he makes of what little
mind he has received. I held that the safest thing for every man
was to be absolutely honest, and to express his honest thought.
After the delivery of this lecture various ministers in Wilmington
began replying, and after the preaching of twenty or thirty
sermons, not one of which, considered as a reply, was a success, I
presume it occurred to these ministers that the shortest and
easiest way would be to have me indicted and imprisoned.

     In this I entirely agree with them. It is the old and
time-honored way. I believe it is, as it always has been, easier to
kill two infidels than to answer one; and if Christianity expects
to stem the tide that is now slowly rising over the intellectual
world, it must be done by brute force, and by brute force alone.
And it must be done pretty soon, or they will not have the brute
force. It is doubtful if they have a majority of the civilized
world on their side to-day. No heretic ever would have been burned
if he could have been answered. No theologian ever called for the
help of the law until his logic gave out.

     I suppose Judge Comegys to be a Presbyterian. Where did he get
his right to be a Presbyterian? Where did he get his right to
decide which creed is the correct one? How did he dare to pit his
little brain against the word of God? He may say that his father
was a Presbyterian. But what was his grandfather? If he will only
go back far enough he will, in all probability, find that his
ancestors were Catholics, and if he will go back a little farther 
still, that they were barbarians; that at one time they were naked,
and had snakes tattooed on their bodies. What right had they to
change? Does he not perceive that had the savages passed the same
kind of laws that now exist in Delaware, they could have prevented
any change in belief? They would have had a whipping-post, too, and
they would have said: "Any gentleman found without snakes tattooed
upon his body shall be held guilty of blasphemy; "and all the
ancestors of this Judge, and of these ministers would have said,
Amen!

     What right had the first Presbyterian to be a Presbyterian? He
must have been a blasphemer first. A small dose of pillory might
have changed his religion. Does this Judge think that Delaware is
incapable of any improvement in a religious point of view? Does he
think that the Presbyterians of Delaware are not only the best now,
but that they will forever be the best that God can make? Is there
to be no advancement? Has there been no advancement? Are the
pillory and the whipping post to be used to prevent an excess of
thought in the county of New Castle? Has the county ever been
troubled that way? Has this Judge ever had symptoms of any such
disease? Now, I want it understood that I like this Judge, and my
principal reason for liking him is that he is the last of his race.
He will be so inundated with the ridicule of mankind that no other 


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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

Chief Justice in Delaware, or anywhere else, will ever follow his
illustrious example. The next Judge will say: "So far as I am
concerned, the Lord may attend to his own business, and deal with
infidels as he may see proper." Thus great good has been
accomplished by this Judge, which shows, as Burns puts it, "that a
pot can be boiled, even if the devil tries to prevent it."

     Question. How will this action of Delaware, in your opinion,
affect the other States?

     Answer. Probably a few other States needed an example exactly
of this kind. New Jersey, in all probability, will say: "Delaware
is perfectly ridiculous," and yet, had Delaware waited awhile, New
Jersey might have done the same thing. Maryland will exclaim: "Did
you ever see such a fool!" And yet I was threatened in that State.
The average American citizen, taking into consideration the fact
that we are blest, or cursed, with about one hundred thousand
preachers, and that these preachers preach on the average one
hundred thousand sermons a week -- some of which are heard clear
through -- will unquestionably hold that a man who happens to
differ with all these parsons ought to have and shall have the
privilege of expressing his mind; and that the one hundred thousand
clergymen ought to be able to put down the one man who happens to
disagree with them, without calling on the army or navy to do it,
especially when it is taken into consideration that an infinite God
is already on their side. Under these circumstances, the average
American will say: "Let him talk, and let the hundred thousand
preachers answer him to their hearts' content." So that in my
judgment the result of the action of Delaware will be: First, to
liberalize all other States, and second, finally to liberalize
Delaware itself. In many of the States they have the same idiotic
kind of laws as those found in Delaware -- with the exception of
those blessed institutions for the spread of the Gospel, known as
the pillory and the whipping -- post. There is a law in Maine by
which a man can be put into the penitentiary for denying the
providence of God, and the day of judgment. There are similar laws
in most of the New England States. One can be imprisoned in
Maryland for a like offence.

     In North Carolina no man can hold office that has not a
certain religious belief; and so in several other of the Southern
States. In half the States of this Union, if my wife and children
should be murdered before my eyes, I would not be allowed in a
court of justice to tell who the murderer was. You see that, for
hundreds of years, Christianity has endeavored to put the brand of
infamy on every intellectual brow.

     Question. I see that one objection to your lectures urged by
Judge Comegys on the grand jury is, that they tend to a breach of
the peace -- to riot and bloodshed.

     Answer. Yes; Judge Comegys seems to be afraid that people who
love their enemies will mob their friends. He is afraid that those
disciples who, when smitten on one cheek turn the other to be
smitten also, will get up a riot. He seems to imagine that good
Christians feel called upon to violate the commands of the Lord in
defence of the Lord's reputation. If Christianity produces people 


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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

who cannot hear their doctrines discussed without raising mobs, and
shedding blood, the sooner it is stopped being preached the better.

     There is not the slightest danger of any infidel attacking a
Christian for his belief, and there never will be an infidel mob
for such a purpose. Christians can teach and preach their views to
their hearts' content. They can send all unbelievers to an eternal
hell, if it gives them the least pleasure, and they may bang their
Bibles as long as their fists last, but no infidel will be in
danger of raising a riot to stop them, or put them down by brute
force, or even by an appeal to the law, and I would advise Judge
Comegys, if he wishes to compliment Christianity, to change his
language and say that he feared a breach of the peace might be
committed by the infidels -- not by the Christians. He may possibly
have thought that it was my intention to attack his State. But I
can assure him, that if ever I start a warfare of that kind, I
shall take some State of my size. There is no glory to be won in
wringing the neck of a "Blue Hen!"

     Question. I should judge, Colonel, that you are prejudiced
against the State of Delaware?

     Answer. Not by any means. Oh, no! I know a great many splendid
people in Delaware, and since I have known more of their
surroundings, my admiration for them has increased. They are, on
the whole, a very good people in that State. I heard a story the
other day: An old fellow in Delaware has been for the last twenty
or thirty years gathering peaches there in their season -- a kind
of peach tramp. One day last fall, just as the season closed, he
was leaning sadly against a tree, "Boys!" said he, "I'd like to
come back to Delaware a hundred years from now." The boys asked,
"What for?" The old fellow replied: "Just to see how damned little
they'd get the baskets by that time." And it occurred to me that
people who insist that twenty-two quarts make a bushel, should be
as quiet as possible on the subject of blasphemy.

                          ****    ****

            Chicago Times interview, Feb. 14, 1881.

             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.


     Question. Have you read Chief Justice Comegys' compliments to
you before the Delaware grand jury?

     Answer. Yes, I have read his charge, in which he relies upon
the law passed in 1740. After reading his charge it seemed to me as
though he had died about the date of the law, had risen from the
dead, and had gone right on where he had left off. I presume he is
a good man, but compared with other men, is something like his
State when compared with other States.

     A great many people will probably regard the charge of Judge
Comegys as unchristian, but I do not. I consider that the law of
Delaware is in exact accord with the Bible, and that the pillory,
the whipping-post, and the suppression of free speech are the
natural fruit of the Old and New Testament.

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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

     Delaware is right. Christianity can not succeed, can not
exist, without the protection of law. Take from orthodox
Christianity the protection of law, and all church property would
be taxed like other property. The Sabbath would be no longer a day
devoted to superstition. Everyone could express his honest thought
upon every possible subject. Everyone, notwithstanding his belief,
could testify in a court of justice. In other words, honesty would
be on an equality with hypocrisy. Science would stand on a level,
so far as the law is concerned, with superstition. Whenever this
happens the end of orthodox Christianity will be near.

     By Christianity I do not mean charity, mercy, kindness,
forgiveness. I mean no natural virtue, because all the natural
virtues existed and had been practiced by hundreds and thousands of
millions before Christ was born. There certainly were some good men
even in the days of Christ in Jerusalem, before his death.

     By Christianity I mean the ideas of redemption, atonement, a
good man dying for a bad man, and the bad man getting a receipt in
full. By Christianity I mean that system that insists that in the
next world a few will be forever happy, while the many will be
eternally miserable. Christianity, as I have explained it, must be
protected, guarded, and sustained by law. It was founded by the
sword -- that is to say, by physical force, -- and must be
preserved by like means.

     In many of the States of the Union an infidel is not allowed
to testify. In the State of Delaware, if Alexander von Humboldt
were living, he could not be a witness, although he had more brains
than the State of Delaware has ever produced, or is likely to
produce as long as the laws of 1740 remain in force. Such men as
Huxley, Tyndall and Haeckel could be fined and imprisoned in the
State of Delaware, and, in fact, in many States of this Union.
Christianity, in order to defend itself, puts the brand of infamy
on the brow of honesty. Christianity marks with a letter "C,"
standing for "convict" every brain that is great enough to discover
the frauds. I have no doubt that Judge Comegys is a good and
sincere Christian. I believe that he, in his charge, gives an exact
reflection of the Jewish Jehovah. I believe that every word he said
was in exact accord with the spirit of orthodox Christianity.
Against this man personally I have nothing to say. I know nothing
of his character except as I gather it from this charge, and after
reading the charge I am forced simply to say, Judge Comegys is a
Christian.

     It seems, however. that the grand jury dared to take no
action, notwithstanding they had been counseled to do so by the
Judge. Although the Judge had quoted to them the words of George I.
of blessed memory; although he had quoted to them the words of Lord
Mansfield, who became a Judge simply because of his hatred of the
English colonists, simply because he despised liberty in the new
world; notwithstanding the fact that I could have been punished
with insult, with imprisonment, and with stripes, and with every
form of degradation; notwithstanding that only a few years ago I
could have been branded upon the forehead, bored through the
tongue, maimed and disfigured, still, such has been the advance
even in the State of Delaware, owing, it may be, in great part to 


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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

the one lecture delivered by me, that the grand jury absolutely
refused to indict me.

     The grand jury satisfied themselves and their consciences
simply by making a report in which they declared that my lecture
had "no parallel in the habits of respectable vagabondism;" that I
was "an arch-blasphemer and reviler of God and religion," and
recommended that should I ever attempt to lecture again I should be
taught that in Delaware blasphemy is a crime punishable by fine and
imprisonment. I have no doubt that every member of the grand jury
signing this report was entirely honest; that he acted in exact
accord with what he understood to be the demand of the Christian
religion. I must admit that for Christians, the report is
exceedingly mild and gentle.

     I have now in the house, letters that passed between certain
bishops in the fifteenth century, in which they discussed the
propriety of cutting out the tongues of heretics before they were
burned. Some of the bishops were in favor of and some against it.
One argument for cutting out their tongues which seemed to have
settled the question was, that unless the tongues of heretics were
cut out they might scandalize the gentlemen who were burning them,
by blasphemous remarks during the fire. I would commend these
letters to Judge Comegys and the members of the grand Jury.

     I want it distinctly understood that I have nothing against
Judge Comegys or the grand jury. They act as most anybody would,
raised in Delaware, in the shadow of the whipping-post and the
pillory. We must remember that Delaware was a slave State; that the
Bible became extremely dear to the people because it upheld that
peculiar institution. We must remember that the Bible was the block
on which mother and child stood for sale when they were separated
by the Christians of Delaware. The Bible was regarded as the
title-pages to slavery, and as the book of all books that gave the
right to masters to whip mothers and to sell children.

     There are many offenses now for which the punishment is
whipping and standing in the pillory; where persons are convicted
of certain crimes and sent to the penitentiary, and upon being
discharged from the penitentiary are furnished by the State with a
dark jacket plainly marked on the back with a large Roman "C," the
letter to be of a light color. This they are to wear for six months
after being discharged, and if they are found at any time without
the dark jacket and the illuminated "C" they are to be punished
with twenty lashes upon the bare back. The object, I presume, of
this law, is to drive from the State all the discharged convicts
for the benefit of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland -- that is
to say, other Christian communities. A cruel people make cruel
laws.

     The objection I have to the whipping-post is that it is a
punishment which cannot be inflicted by a gentleman. The person who
administers the punishment must, of necessity, be fully as degraded
as the person who receives it. I am opposed to any kind of
punishment that cannot be administered by a gentleman. I am opposed
to corporal punishment everywhere. It should be taken from the
asylums and penitentiaries, and any man who would apply the lash to
the naked back of another is beneath the contempt of honest people.

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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

     Question. Have you seen that Henry Bergh has introduced in the
New york Legislature a bill providing for whipping as a punishment
for wife-beating?

     Answer. The objection I have mentioned is fatal to Mr. Bergh's
bill. He will be able to get persons to beat wife-beaters, who,
under the same circumstances, would be wife-beaters themselves. If
they are not wife-beaters when they commence the business of
beating others, they soon will be. I think that wife-beating in
great cities could be stopped by putting all the wife-beaters at
work at some government employment, the value of the work, however,
to go to the wives and children. The trouble now is that most of
the wife-beating is among the extremely poor, so that the wife by 
informing against her husband, takes the last crust out of her own
mouth. If you substitute whipping or flogging for the prison here,
you will in the first place prevent thousands of wives from
informing, and in many cases, where the wife would inform, she
would afterward be murdered by the flogged brute. This brute would
naturally resort to the same means to reform his wife that the
State had resorted to for the purpose of reforming him. Flogging
would beget flogging. Mr. Bergh is a man of great kindness of
heart. When he reads that a wife has been beaten, he says the
husband deserves to be beaten himself. But if Mr. Bergh was to be
the executioner, I imagine you could not prove by the back of the
man that the punishment had been inflicted.

     Another good remedy for wife-beating is the abolition of the
Catholic Church. We should also do away with the idea that a
marriage is a sacrament, and that there is any God who is rendered
happy by seeing a husband and wife live together, although the
husband gets most of his earthly enjoyment from whipping his wife.
No woman should live with a man a moment after he has struck her.
Just as the idea of liberty enlarges, confidence in the whip and
fist, in the kick and blow, will diminish. Delaware occupies toward
freethinkers precisely the same position that a wife-beater does
toward the wife. Delaware knows that there are no reasons
sufficient to uphold Christianity, consequently these reasons are
supplemented with the pillory and the whipping-post. The
whipping-post is considered one of God's arguments, and the pillory
is a kind of moral suasion, the use of which fills heaven with a
kind of holy and serene delight. I am opposed to the religion of
brute force, but all these frightful things have grown principally
out of a belief in eternal punishment and out of the further idea
that a certain belief is necessary to avoid eternal pain.

     If Christianity is right, Delaware is right. If God will damn
every body forever simply for being intellectually honest, surely
he ought to allow the good people of Delaware to imprison the same
gentleman for two months. Of course there are thousands and
thousands of good people in Delaware, people who have been in other
States, people who have listened to Republican speeches, people who
have read the works of scientists, who hold the laws of 1740 in
utter abhorrence; people who pity Judge Comegys and who have a kind
of sympathy for the grand jury.

     You will see that at the last election Delaware lacked only
six or seven hundred of being a civilized State, and probably in 


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             AN INTERVIEW ON CHIEF JUSTICE COMEGYS.

1884 will stand redeemed and regenerated, with the laws of 1740
expunged from the statute book. Delaware has not had the best of
opportunities. You must remember that it is next to New Jersey,
which is quite an obstacle in the Path of progress. It is just
beyond Maryland, which is another obstacle. I heard the other day
that God originally made oysters with legs, and afterward took them
off, knowing that the people of Delaware would starve to death
before they would run to catch anything. Judge Comegys is the last
judge who will make such a charge in the United States. He has
immortalized himself as the last mile-stone on that road. He is the
last of his race. No more can be born. Outside of this he probably
was a very clever man, and it may be, he does not believe a word he
utters. The probability is that he has underestimated the
intelligence of the people of Delaware. I am afraid to think that
he is entirely honest, for fear that I may underestimate him
intellectually, and overestimate him morally. Nothing could tempt
me to do this man injustice. though, I could hardly add to the
injury he has done himself. He has called attention to laws that
ought to be repealed, and to lectures that ought to be repeated. I
feel in my heart that he has done me a great service, second only
to that for which I am indebted to the grand jury. Had the Judge
known me personally he probably would have said nothing. Should I
have the misfortune to be arrested in his State and sentenced to
two months of solitary confinement, the Judge having become
acquainted with me during the trial. would probably insist on
spending most of his time in my cell. At the end of the two months
he would, I think, lay himself liable to the charge of blasphemy.
providing he had honor enough to express his honest thought. After
all, it is all a question of honesty. Every man is right. I cannot
convince myself there is any God who will ever damn a man for
having been honest. This gives me a certain hope for the Judge and
the grand jury.

     For two or three days I have been thinking what joy there must
have been in heaven when Jehovah heard that Delaware was on his
side, and remarked to the angels in the language of the late Adjt.
Gen. Thomas: "The eyes of all Delaware are upon you.

                          ****     ****

    Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.

   The Bank of Wisdom Inc. is a collection of the most thoughtful,
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
that America can again become what its Founders intended --

                 The Free Market-Place of Ideas.

   The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
us, we need to give them back to America.


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               10
