The Police Captains' Dinner
After-dinner speech.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1890)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 12.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/police-captains-dinner/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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The Police Captains' Dinner

New York, January 24, 1888.

TOAST: DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES OF THE PRESS.

ONLY a little while ago, the nations of the world were ignorant and
provincial. Between these nations there were the walls and barriers of
language, of prejudice, of custom, of race and of religion. Each
little nation had the only perfect form of government—the only genuine
religion—all others being adulterations or counterfeits.

These nations met only as enemies. They had nothing to exchange but
blows—nothing to give and take but wounds.

Movable type was invented, and "civilization was thrust into the brain
of Europe on the point of a Moorish lance." The Moors gave to our
ancestors paper, and nearly all valuable inventions that were made for a
thousand years.

In a little while, books began to be printed—the nations began to
exchange thoughts instead of blows. The classics were translated. These
were read, and those who read them began to imitate them—began to write
themselves; and in this way there was produced in each nation a local
literature. There came to be an exchange of facts, of theories, of
ideas.

For many years this was accomplished by books, but after a time the
newspaper was invented, and the exchange increased.

Before this, every peasant thought his king the greatest being in the
world. He compared this king—his splendor, his palace—with the
peasant neighbor, with his rags and with his hut. All his thoughts were
provincial, all his knowledge confined to his own neighborhood—the
great world was to him an unknown land.

Long after papers were published, the circulation was small, the means
of intercommunication slow, painful, few and costly.

The same was true in our own country, and here, too, was in a great
degree, the provincialism of the Old World.

Finally, the means of intercommunication increased, and they became
plentiful and cheap.

Then the peasant found that he must compare his king with the kings
of other nations—the statesmen of his country with the statesmen of
others—and these comparisons were not always favorable to the men of
his own country.

This enlarged his knowledge and his vision, and the tendency of this was
to make him a citizen of the world.

Here in our own country, a little while ago, the citizen of each State
regarded his State as the best of all. To love that State more than all
others, was considered the highest evidence of patriotism.

The Press finally informed him of the condition of other States. He
found that other States were superior to his in many ways—in climate,
in production, in men, in invention, in commerce and in influence.
Slowly he transferred the love of State, the prejudice of locality—what
I call mud patriotism—to the Nation, and he became an American in the
best and highest sense.

This, then, is one of the greatest things to be accomplished by
the Press in America—namely, the unification of the country—the
destruction of provincialism, and the creation of a patriotism broad as
the territory covered by our flag.

The same ideas, the same events, the same news, are carried to millions
of homes every day. The result of this is to fix the attention of
all upon the same things, the same thoughts and theories, the same
facts—and the result is to get the best judgment of a nation.

This is a great and splendid object, but not the greatest.

In Europe the same thing is taking place. The nations are becoming
acquainted with each other. The old prejudices are dying out. The people
cf each nation are beginning to find that they are not the enemies of
any other. They are also beginning to suspect that where they have no
cause of quarrel, they should neither be called upon to fight, nor to
pay the expenses of war.

Another thing: The kings and statesmen no longer act as they
formerly did. Once they were responsible only to their poor and
wretched-subjects, whose obedience they compelled at the point of the
bayonet. Now a king knows, and his minister knows, that they must give
account for what they do to the civilized world. They know that kings
and rulers must be tried before the great bar of public opinion—a
public opinion that has been formed by the facts given to them in the
Press of the world. They do not wish to be condemned at that great bar.
They seek not only not to be condemned—not only to be acquitted—but
they seek to be crowned. They seek the applause, not simply of their own
nation, but of the civilized world.

There was for uncounted centuries a conflict between civilization and
barbarism. Barbarism was almost universal, civilization local. The torch
of progress was then held by feeble hands, and barbarism extinguished it
in the blood of its founders. But civilizations arose, and kept rising,
one after another, until now the great Republic holds and is able to
hold that torch against a hostile world.

By its invention, by its weapons of war, by its intelligence,
civilization became capable of protecting itself, and there came a time
when in the struggle between civilization and barbarism the world passed
midnight.

Then came another struggle,—the struggle between the people and their
rulers.

Most peoples sacrificed their liberty through gratitude to some great
soldier who rescued them from the arms of the barbarian. But there came
a time when the people said: "We have a right to govern ourselves." And
that conflict has been waged for centuries.

And I say, protected and corroborated by the flag of the greatest of all
Republics, that in that conflict the world has passed midnight.

Despotisms were softened by parliaments, by congresses—but at last the
world is beginning to say: "The right to govern rests upon the consent
of the governed. The power comes from the people—not from kings. It
belongs to man, and should be exercised by man."

In this conflict we have passed midnight. The world is destined to be
republican. Those who obey the laws will make the laws.

Our country—the United States—the great Republic—owns the fairest
portion of half the world. We have now sixty millions of free people.
Look upon the map of our country. Look upon the great valley of the
Mississippi—stretching from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. See the
great basin drained by that mighty river. There you will see a territory
large enough to feed and clothe and educate five hundred millions of
human beings.

This country is destined to remain as one. The Mississippi River is
Nature's protest against secession and against division.

We call that nation civilized when its subjects submit their differences
of opinion, in accordance with the forms of law, to fellow-citizens who
are disinterested and who accept the decision as final.

The nations, however, sustain no such relation to each other. Each
nation concludes for itself. Each nation defines its rights and its
obligations; and nations will not be civilized in respect of their
relations to each other, until there shall have been established a
National Court to decide differences between nations, to the judgment of
which all shall bow.

It is for the Press—the Press that photographs the human activities
of every day—the Press that gives the news of the world to each
individual—to bend its mighty energies to the unification and the
civilization of mankind; to the destruction of provincialism, of
prejudice—to the extirpation of ignorance and to the creation of a
great and splendid patriotism that embraces the human race.

The Press presents the daily thoughts of men. It marks the progress
of each hour, and renders a relapse into ignorance and barbarism
impossible. No catastrophe can be great enough, no ruin wide-spread
enough, to engulf or blot out the wisdom of the world.

Feeling that it is called to this high destiny, the Press should appeal
only to the highest and to the noblest in the human heart.

It should not be the bat of suspicion, a raven, hoarse with croaking
disaster, a chattering jay of gossip, or a vampire fattening on the
reputations of men.

It should remain the eagle, rising and soaring high in the cloudless
blue, above all mean and sordid things, and grasping only the bolts and
arrows of justice.

Let the Press have the courage always to defend the right, always
to defend the people—and let it always have the power to clutch and
strangle any combination of men, however intellectual or cunning or
rich, that feeds and fattens on the flesh and blood of honest men.

In a little while, under our flag there will be five hundred millions
of people. The great Republic will then dictate to the world—that is to
say, it will succor the oppressed—it will see that justice is done—it
will say to the great nations that wish to trample upon the weak: "You
must not—you shall not—strike." It will be obeyed.

All I ask is—all I hope is—that the Press will always be worthy of the
great Republic.
