I.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ingersoll, Robert Green and Widger, David
Sirven, a Protestant, lived in Languedoc with his wife and three daughters. The housekeeper of the bishop wanted to make one of the daughters a Catholic.
The law allowed the bishop to take the child of Protestants from their parents for the sake of its soul. This little girl was so taken and placed in a convent. She ran away and came back to her parents. Her poor little body was covered with the marks of the convent whip.
"Suffer little children to come unto me."
The child was out of her mind—suddenly she disappeared, and a few days after her little body was found in a well, three miles from home.
The cry was raised that her folks had murdered her to keep her from becoming a Catholic.
This happened only a little way from the Christian City of Toulouse while Jean Calas was in prison. The Sirvens knew that a trial would end in conviction. They fled. In their absence they were convicted, their property confiscated, the parents sentenced to die by the hangman, the daughters to be under the gallows during the execution of their mother, and then to be exiled.
The family fled in the midst of winter; the married daughter gave birth to a child in the snows of the Alps; the mother died, and, at last reaching Switzerland, the father found himself without means of support.
They went to Voltaire. He espoused their cause. He took care of them, gave them the means to live, and labored to annul the sentence that had been pronounced against them for nine long and weary years. He appealed to kings for money, to Catharine II. of Russia, and to hundreds of others. He was successful. He said of this case: The Sirvens were tried and condemned in two hours in January, 1762, and now in January, 1772, after ten years of effort, they have been restored to their rights.
This was the work of Voltaire. Why should the worshipers of God hate the lovers of men?
THE ESPENASSE CASE.
Espenasse was a Protestant, of good estate. In 1740 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging.
In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan," this was a crime.
For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life.
When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, and he was, through the efforts of Voltaire, released and restored to his family.
This was the work of Voltaire. There is not time to tell of the case of General Lally, of the English General Byng, of the niece of Corneille, of the Jesuit Adam, of the writers, dramatists, actors, widows and orphans for whose benefit he gave his influence, his money and his time. But I will tell another case:
In 1765, at the town of Abbeville, an old wooden cross on a bridge had been mutilated—whittled with a knife—a terrible crime. Sticks, when crossing each other, were far more sacred than flesh and blood. Two young men were suspected—the Chevalier de la Barre and D'Etallonde. D'Etallonde fled to Prussia and enlisted as a common soldier.
La Barre remained and stood his trial.
He was convicted without the slightest evidence, and he and D'Etallonde were both sentenced:
First, to endure the torture, ordinary and extraordinary.
Second, to have their tongues torn out by the roots with pincers of iron.
Third, to have their right hands cut off at the door of the church.
Fourth, to be bound to stakes by chains of iron and burned to death by a slow fire.
"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
Remembering this, the judges mitigated the sentence by providing that their heads should be cut off before their bodies were given to the flames.
The case was appealed to Paris; heard by a court composed of twenty-five judges, learned in the law, and the judgment was confirmed.
The sentence was carried out on the first day of July, 1766.
When Voltaire heard of this judicial infamy he made up his mind to abandon France. He wished to leave forever a country where such cruelties were possible.
He wrote a pamphlet, giving the history of the case.
He ascertained the whereabouts of D'Etallonde, wrote in his behalf to the King of Prussia; got him released from the army; took him to his own house; kept him for a year and a half; saw that he was instructed in drawing, mathematics, engineering, and had at last the happiness of seeing him a captain of engineers in the army of Frederick the Great.
Such a man was Voltaire. He was the champion of the oppressed and the helpless. He was the Cæsar to whom the victims of church and state appealed. He stood for the intellect and heart of his time.
And yet for a hundred and fifty years those who love their enemies have exhausted the vocabulary of hate, the ingenuity of malice and mendacity, in their efforts to save their stupid creeds from the genius of Voltaire.
From a great height he surveyed the world. His horizon was large. He had some vices—these he shared in common with priests—his virtues were his own.
He was in favor of universal education—of the development of the brain. The church despised him. He wished to put the knowledge of the whole world within the reach of all. Every priest was his enemy. He wished to drive from the gate of Eden the cherubim of superstition, so that the children of Adam might return and eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The church opposed this because it had the fruit of the tree of ignorance for sale.
He was one of the foremost friends of the Encyclopedia—of Diderot, and did all in his power to give information to all. So far as principles were concerned, he was the greatest lawyer of his time. I do not mean that he knew the terms and decisions, but that he clearly perceived not only what the law should be, but its application and administration. He understood the philosophy of evidence, the difference between suspicion and proof, between belief and knowledge, and he did more to reform the laws of the kingdom and the abuses at courts than all the lawyers and statesmen of his time.
At school, he read and studied the works of Cicero—the lord of language—probably the greatest orator that has uttered speech, and the words of the Roman remained in his brain. He became, in spite of the spirit of caste, a believer in the equality of men. He said:
"Men are born equal."
"Let us respect virtue and merit."
"Let us have it in the heart that men are equal." He was an abolitionist—the enemy of slavery in all its forms. He did not think that the color of one man gave him the right to steal from another man on account of that man's color. He was the friend of serf and peasant, and did what he could to protect animals, wives and children from the fury of those who loved their neighbors as themselves.
It was Voltaire who sowed the seeds of liberty in the heart and brain of Franklin, of Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
Pufendorf had taken the ground that slavery was, in part, founded on contract.