d who think they had better not
tell what they really think because it will take bread from their
little children, because it will take clothing from their
families--don't do it! don't make martyrs of yourselves! I don't
believe in martyrdom! Go right along with them; go to church and say
amen as near the right place as you can. I will do your talking for
you. They can't take the bread away from me. I will talk. Bodemus, a
lawyer of France, wrote a few words in favor of freedom of conscience.
Montaigne was the first to raise his voice against torture in France;
but what was the voice of one man against the terrible cry of ignorant,
infatuated, malevolent millions! I intend to do what little I can, and
I am going to do it kindly. I am going to appeal to reason and to
charity, to justice, to science, and to the future. For my part, I
glory in the fact that in the New World, in the United States, liberty
of conscience was first granted to man, and that the Constitution of
the United States was the first great decree entered in the high court
of human equity forever divorcing Church and State. It is the grandest
step ever taken by the human race and the Declaration of Independence
was the first document that retired ghosts from politics. It is the
first document that said authority does not come from the phantoms of
the air; authority is not from that direction; it comes from the people
themselves. The Declaration of Independence enthroned man and
dethroned the phantoms. You will ask what has caused this change in
three hundred years. I answer, the inventions and discoveries of the
few; the brave thoughts and heroic utterances of the few; the
acquisition of a few facts; getting acquainted with our mother, Nature.
Besides this, you must remember that every wrong in some way, tends to
abolish itself. It is hard to make a lie last always. A lie will not
fit the truth; it will only fit another lie told on purpose to fit it.
Nothing but truth lives.

The nobles and the kings quarreled; the priests began to dispute, and
the millions began to get their rights. In 1441 printing was
discovered. At that time the past was a vast cemetery, without an
epitaph. The ideas of men had mostly perished in the brains that had
produced them. Printing gives an opening for thought; it preserves
ideas; it made it possible for a man to bequeath to the world the
wealth of his thoughts. About the same time, or a little before, the
M