And wherever such laws have been enforced, have the people been friends? Here we are to-day in this blessed air--here amid these happy fields. Can we imagine, with these surroundings, that a man for having been found with a crucifix in his poor little home, had been taken from his wife and children and burned--burned by Protestants? You cannot conceive of such a thing now. Neither can you conceive that there was a time when Catholics found some poor Protestant contradicting one of the dogmas of the church, and took that poor honest wretch--while his wife wept--while his children clung to his hands--to the public square, drove a stake in the ground, put a chain or two about him, lighted the fagots, and let the wife whom he loved and his little children see the flames climb around his limbs--you cannot imagine that any such infamy was ever practiced. And yet I tell you that the same spirit made this detestable, infamous, devilish statute.
You can hardly imagine that there was a time when the same kind of men that made this law said to another man: "You say this world is round?" "Yes, sir; I think it is, because I have seen its shadow on the moon." "You have?"--Now, can you imagine a society, outside of hyenas and boa-constrictors, that would take that man, put him in the penitentiary, in a dungeon, turn the key upon him, and let his name be blotted from the book of human life? Years afterward some explorer amid ruins finds a few bones. The same spirit that did that, made this statute--the same spirit that did that, went before the grand jury in this case--exactly. Give the men that had this man indicted, the power, and I would not want to live in that particular part of the country. I would not willingly live with such men. I would go somewhere else, where the air is free, where I could speak my sentiments to my wife, to my children, and to my neighbors.
Now, this persecution differs only in degree from the infamies of the olden times. What does it mean? It means that the State of New Jersey has all the light it wants. And what does that mean? It means that the State of New Jersey is absolutely infallible--that it has got its growth and does not propose to grow any more. New Jersey knows enough, and it will send teachers to the penitentiary.