_Question_. Who will be the Republican nominee for President?
_Answer_. The correct answer to this question would make so many
men unhappy that I have concluded not to give it.
_Question_. Has not the Democracy injured itself irretrievably by
permitting the free trade element to rule it?
_Answer_. I do not think that the Democratic party weakened itself
by electing Carlisle, Speaker. I think him an excellent man, an
exceedingly candid man, and one who will do what he believes ought
to be done. I have a very high opinion of Mr. Carlisle. I do not
suppose any party in this country is really for free trade. I find
that all writers upon the subject, no matter which side they are
on, are on that side with certain exceptions. Adam Smith was in
favor of free trade, with a few exceptions, and those exceptions
were in matters where he thought it was for England's interest not
to have free trade. The same may be said of all writers. So far
as I can see, the free traders have all the arguments and the
protectionists all the facts. The free trade theories are splendid,
but they will not work; the results are disastrous. We find by
actual experiment that it is better to protect home industries.
It was once said that protection created nothing but monopoly; the
argument was that way, but the facts are not. Take, for instance,
steel rails; when we bought them of England we paid one hundred
and twenty-five dollars a ton. I believe there was a tariff of
twenty-eight or twenty-nine dollars a ton, and yet in spite of all
the arguments going to show that protection would simply increase
prices in America, would simply enrich the capitalists and impoverish
the consumer, steel rails are now produced, I believe, right here
in Colorado for forty-two dollars a ton.
After all, it is a question of labor; a question of prices that
shall be paid the laboring man; a question of what the laboring
man shall eat; whether he shall eat meat or soup made from the
bones. Very few people take into consideration the value of raw
material and the value of labor. Take, for instance, your ton of
steel rails worth forty-two dollars. The iron in the earth is not
worth twenty-five cents. The coal in the earth and the lime in
the ledge together are not worth twenty-five cents. Now, then, of
the forty-two dollars, forty-one and a half is labor. There is
not two dollars' worth of raw material in a locomotive worth fifteen
thousand dollars. By raw material I mean the material in the earth.
There is not in the works of a watch which will sell for fifteen
dollars, raw material of the value of one-half cent. All the rest
is labor. A ship, a man-of-war that costs one million dollars--
the raw material in the earth is not worth, in my judgment, one
thousand dollars. All the rest is labor. If there is any way to
protect American labor, I am in favor of it. If the present tariff
does not do it, then I am in favor of changing to one that will.
If the Democratic party takes a stand for free trade or anything
like it, they will need protection; they will need protection at
the polls; that is to say, they will meet only with defeat and
disaster.
_Question_. What should be done with the surplus revenue?
_Answer_. My answer to that is, reduce internal revenue taxation
until the present surplus is exhausted, and then endeavor so to
arrange your tariff that you will not produce more than you need.
I think the easiest question to grapple with on this earth is a
surplus of money.
I do not believe in distributing it among the States. I do not think
there could be a better certificate of the prosperity of our country
than the fact that we are troubled with a surplus revenue; that we
have the machinery for collecting taxes in such perfect order, so
ingeniously contrived, that it cannot be stopped; that it goes
right on collecting money, whether we want it or not; and the
wonderful thing about it is that nobody complains. If nothing else
can be done with the surplus revenue, probably we had better pay
some of our debts. I would suggest, as a last resort, to pay a
few honest claims.
_Question_. Are you getting nearer to or farther away from God,
Christianity and the Bible?
_Answer_. In the first place, as Mr. Locke so often remarked, we
will define our terms. If by the word "God" is meant a person, a
being, who existed before the creation of the universe, and who
controls all that is, except himself, I do not believe in such a
being; but if by the word God is meant all that is, that is to say,
the universe, including every atom and every star, then I am a
believer. I suppose the word that would nearest describe me is
"Pantheist." I cannot believe that a being existed from eternity,
and who finally created this universe after having wasted an eternity
in idleness; but upon this subject I know just as little as anybody
ever did or ever will, and, in my judgment, just as much. My
intellectual horizon is somewhat limited, and, to tell you the
truth, this is the only world that I was ever in. I am what might
be called a representative of a rural district, and, as a matter
of fact, I know very little about the district. I believe it was
Confucius who said: "How should I know anything about another
world when I know so little of this?"
The greatest intellects of the world have endeavored to find words
to express their conception of God, of the first cause, or of the
science of being, but they have never succeeded. I find in the
old Confession of Faith, in the old Catechism, for instance, this
description: That God is a being without body, parts or passions.
I think it would trouble anybody to find a better definition of
nothing. That describes a vacuum, that is to say, that describes
the absence of everything. I find that theology is a subject that
only the most ignorant are certain about, and that the more a man
thinks, the less he knows.
From the Bible God, I do not know that I am going farther and
farther away. I have been about as far as a man could get for many
years. I do not believe in the God of the Old Testament.
Now, as to the next branch of your question, Christianity.
The question arises, What is Christianity? I have no objection to
the morality taught as a part of Christianity, no objection to its
charity, its forgiveness, its kindness; no objection to its hope
for this world and another, not the slightest, but all these things
do not make Christianity. Mohammed taught certain doctrines that
are good, but the good in the teachings of Mohammed is not Mohammedism.
When I speak of Christianity I speak of that which is distinctly
Christian. For instance, the idea that the Infinite God was born
in Palestine, learned the carpenter's trade, disputed with the
parsons of his time, excited the wrath of the theological bigots,
and was finally crucified; that afterward he was raised from the
dead, and that if anybody believes this he will be saved and if he
fails to believe it, he will be lost; in other words, that which
is distinctly Christian in the Christian system, is its supernaturalism,
its miracles, its absurdity. Truth does not need to go into
partnership with the supernatural. What Christ said is worth the
reason it contains. If a man raises the dead and then says twice
two are five, that changes no rule in mathematics. If a multiplication
table was divinely inspired, that does no good. The question is,
is it correct? So I think that in the world of morals, we must
prove that a thing is right or wrong by experience, by analogy,
not by miracles. There is no fact in physical science that can be
supernaturally demonstrated. Neither is there any fact in the
moral world that could be substantiated by miracles. Now, then,
keeping in mind that by Christianity I mean the supernatural in
that system, of course I am just as far away from it as I can get.
For the man Christ I have respect. He was an infidel in his day,
and the ministers of his day cried out blasphemy, as they have been
crying ever since, against every person who has suggested a new
thought or shown the worthlessness of an old one.
Now, as to the third part of the question, the Bible. People say
that the Bible is inspired. Well, what does inspiration mean?
Did God write it? No; but the men who did write it were guided by
the Holy Spirit. Very well. Did they write exactly what the Holy
Spirit wanted them to write? Well, religious people say, yes. At
the same time they admit that the gentlemen who were collecting,
or taking down in shorthand what was said, had to use their own
words. Now, we all know that the same words do not have the same
meaning to all people. It is impossible to convey the same thoughts
to all minds by the same language, and it is for that reason that
the Bible has produced so many sects, not only disagreeing with
each other, but disagreeing among themselves.
We find, then, that it is utterly impossible for God (admitting
that there is one) to convey the same thoughts in human language
to all people. No two persons understand the same language alike.
A man's understanding depends upon his experience, upon his capacity,
upon the particular bent of his mind--in fact, upon the countless
influences that have made him what he is. Everything in nature
tells everyone who sees it a story, but that story depends upon
the capacity of the one to whom it is told. The sea says one thing
to the ordinary man, and another thing to Shakespeare. The stars
have not the same language for all people. The consequence is that
no book can tell the same story to any two persons. The Jewish
Scriptures are like other books, written by different men in
different ages of the world, hundreds of years apart, filled with
contradictions. They embody, I presume, fairly enough, the wisdom
and ignorance, the reason and prejudice, of the times in which they
were written. They are worth the good that is in them, and the
question is whether we will take the good and throw the bad away.
There are good laws and bad laws. There are wise and foolish
sayings. There are gentle and cruel passages, and you can find a
text to suit almost any frame of mind; whether you wish to do an
act of charity or murder a neighbor's babe, you will find a passage
that will exactly fit the case. So that I can say that I am still
for the reasonable, for the natural; and am still opposed to the
absurd and supernatural.
_Question_. Is there any better or more ennobling belief than
Christianity; if so, what is it?
_Answer_. There are many good things, of course, in every religion,
or they would not have existed; plenty of good precepts in
Christianity, but the thing that I object to more than all others
is the doctrine of eternal punishment, the idea of hell for many
and heaven for the few. Take from Christianity the doctrine of
eternal punishment and I have no particular objection to what is
generally preached. If you will take that away, and all the
supernatural connected with it, I have no objection; but that
doctrine of eternal punishment tends to harden the human heart.
It has produced more misery than all the other doctrines in the
world. It has shed more blood; it has made more martyrs. It has
lighted the fires of persecution and kept the sword of cruelty wet
with heroic blood for at least a thousand years. There is no crime
that that doctrine has not produced. I think it would be impossible
for the imagination to conceive of a worse religion than orthodox
Christianity--utterly impossible; a doctrine that divides this
world, a doctrine that divides families, a doctrine that teaches
the son that he can be happy, with his mother in perdition; the
husband that he can be happy in heaven while his wife suffers the
agonies of hell. This doctrine is infinite injustice, and tends
to subvert all ideas of justice in the human heart. I think it
would be impossible to conceive of a doctrine better calculated to
make wild beasts of men than that; in fact, that doctrine was born
of all the wild beast there is in man. It was born of infinite
revenge.
Think of preaching that you must believe that a certain being was
the son of God, no matter whether your reason is convinced or not.
Suppose one should meet, we will say on London Bridge, a man clad
in rags, and he should stop us and say, "My friend, I wish to talk
with you a moment. I am the rightful King of Great Britain," and
you should say to him, "Well, my dinner is waiting; I have no time
to bother about who the King of England is," and then he should
meet another and insist on his stopping while the pulled out some
papers to show that he was the rightful King of England, and the
other man should say, "I have got business here, my friend; I am
selling goods, and I have no time to bother my head about who the
King of England is. No doubt you are the King of England, but you
don't look like him." And then suppose he stops another man, and
makes the same statement to him, and the other man should laugh at
him and say, "I don't want to hear anything on this subject; you
are crazy; you ought to go to some insane asylum, or put something
on your head to keep you cool." And suppose, after all, it should
turn out that the man was King of England, and should afterward
make his claim good and be crowned in Westminster. What would we
think of that King if he should hunt up the gentlemen that he met
on London Bridge, and have their heads cut off because they had
no faith that he was the rightful heir? And what would we think
of a God now who would damn a man eighteen hundred years after the
event, because he did not believe that he was God at the time he
was living in Jerusalem; not only damn the fellows that he met and
who did not believe him, but gentlemen who lived eighteen hundred
years afterward, and who certainly could have known nothing of the
facts except from hearsay?
The best religion, after all, is common sense; a religion for this
world, one world at a time, a religion for to-day. We want a
religion that will deal in questions in which we are interested.
How are we to do away with crime? How are we to do away with
pauperism? How are we to do away with want and misery in every
civilized country? England is a Christian nation, and yet about
one in six in the city of London dies in almshouses, asylums,
prisons, hospitals and jails. We, I suppose, are a civilized
nation, and yet all the penitentiaries are crammed; there is want
on every hand, and my opinion is that we had better turn our
attention to this world.
Christianity is charitable; Christianity spends a great deal of
money; but I am somewhat doubtful as to the good that is accomplished.
There ought to be some way to prevent crime; not simply to punish
it. There ought to be some way to prevent pauperism, not simply
to relieve temporarily a pauper, and if the ministers and good
people belonging to the churches would spend their time investigating
the affairs of this world and let the New Jerusalem take care of
itself, I think it would be far better.
The church is guilty of one great contradiction. The ministers
are always talking about worldly people, and yet, were it not for
worldly people, who would pay the salary? How could the church
live a minute unless somebody attended to the affairs of this world?
The best religion, in my judgment, is common sense going along hand
in hand with kindness, and not troubling ourselves about another
world until we get there. I am willing for one, to wait and see
what kind of a country it will be.
_Question_. Does the question of the inspiration of Scriptures
affect the beauty and benefits of Christianity here and hereafter?
_Answer_. A belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures has done,
in my judgment, great harm. The Bible has been the breastwork for
nearly everything wrong. The defenders of slavery relied on the
Bible. The Bible was the real auction block on which every negro
stood when he was sold. I never knew a minister to preach in favor
of slavery that did not take his text from the Bible. The Bible
teaches persecution for opinion's sake. The Bible--that is the
Old Testament--upholds polygamy, and just to the extent that men,
through the Bible, have believed that slavery, religious persecution,
wars of extermination and polygamy were taught by God, just to that
extent the Bible has done great harm. The idea of inspiration
enslaves the human mind and debauches the human heart.
_Question_. Is not Christianity and the belief in God a check upon
mankind in general and thus a good thing in itself?
_Answer_. This, again, brings up the question of what you mean by
Christianity, but taking it for granted that you mean by Christianity
the church, then I answer, when the church had almost absolute
authority, then the world was the worst.
Now, as to the other part of the question, "Is not a belief in God
a check upon mankind in general?" That is owing to what kind of
God the man believes in. When mankind believed in the God of the
Old Testament, I think that belief was a bad thing; the tendency
was bad. I think that John Calvin patterned after Jehovah as nearly
as his health and strength would permit. Man makes God in his own
image, and bad men are not apt to have a very good God if they make
him. I believe it is far better to have a real belief in goodness,
in kindness, in honesty and in mankind than in any supernatural
being whatever. I do not suppose it would do any harm for a man
to believe in a real good God, a God without revenge, a God that
was not very particular in having a man believe a doctrine whether
he could understand it or not. I do not believe that a belief of
that kind would do any particular harm.
There is a vast difference between the God of John Calvin and the
God of Henry Ward Beecher, and a great difference between the God
of Cardinal Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza and the God of Theodore
Parker.
_Question_. Well, Colonel, is the world growing better or worse?
_Answer_. I think better in some respects and worse in others;
but on the whole, better. I think that while events, like the
pendulum of a clock, go backward and forward, man, like the hands,
goes forward. I think there is more reason and less religion, more
charity and less creed. I think the church is improving. Ministers
are ashamed to preach the old doctrines with the old fervor. There
was a time when the pulpit controlled the pews. It is so no longer.
The pews know what they want, and if the minister does not furnish
it they discharge him and employ another. He is no longer an
autocrat; he must bring to the market what his customers are willing
to buy.
_Question_. What are you going to do to be saved?
_Answer_. Well, I think I am safe, anyway. I suppose I have a
right to rely on what Matthew says, that if I will forgive others
God will forgive me. I suppose if there is another world I shall
be treated very much as I treat others. I never expect to find
perfect bliss anywhere; maybe I should tire of it if I should.
What I have endeavored to do has been to put out the fires of an
ignorant and cruel hell; to do what I could to destroy that dogma;
to destroy the doctrine that makes the cradle as terrible as the
coffin.
--_The Denver Republican_, Denver, Colorado, January 17, 1884.