Ladies and Gentlemen:—It so happened that the first speech—the veryfirst public speech I ever made—took occasion to defend the memory ofThomas Paine.
I did it because I had read a little something of the history of mycountry. I did it because I felt indebted to him for the liberty Ithen enjoyed—and whatever religion may be true, ingratitude is theblackest of crimes. And whether there is any God or not, in every starthat shines, gratitude is a virtue.
The man who will tell the truth about the dead is a good man, and forone, about this man, I intend to tell just as near the truth as I can.
Most history consists in giving the details of things that neverhappened—most biography is usually the lie coming from the mouth offlattery, or the slander coming from the lips of malice, and whoeverattacks the religion of a country will, in his turn, be attacked.Whoever attacks a superstition will find that superstition defended byall the meanness of ingenuity. Whoever attacks a superstition willfind that there is still one weapon left in the arsenal ofJehovah—slander.
I was reading, yesterday, a poem called the "Light of Asia," and I readin that how a Boodh seeing a tigress perishing of thirst, with hermouth upon the dry stone of a stream, with her two cubs sucking at herdry and empty dugs, this Boodh took pity upon this wild and famishingbeast, and, throwing from himself the Yellowrobe of his order, andstepping naked before this tigress, said: "Here is meat for you andyour cubs." In one moment the crooked daggers of her claws ran riot inhis flesh, and in another he was devoured. Such, during nearly all thehistory of this world, has been the history of every man who has stoodin front of superstition.
Thomas Paine, as has been so eloquently said by the g