The World as It Is and General Advertiser, 7 May 1836
Of the Anniversary of the Birth of THOMAS PAINE.
Brecksville, Ohio, Jan. 29, 1836.
The citizens of Brecksville and vicinity held a public celebration at the Academical school house, on the 29th of January, to commemorate the birth day of the patriotic Thomas Paine. The declaration of the American Liberals, was then read by the Hon. Isaac M. Morgan, as follows:
“When, in the course of conscientious events, it becomes necessary for one class of people to dissolve the religious chains with which they have been bound by another, and to assume, among their fellow citizens, that equal station to which our republican Constitution entitles them, a decent respect to public opinion requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by Nature, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the free exercise and enjoyment of their opinions on religion. That to secure these rights, our Fathers shed their blood, and established our political Constitution; that, whenever a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same objects, evinces a design to reduce them under priestly dominion, it is their duty, to resist such treasonable encroachments, and to provide effectual means to secure their future safety. Such has been the patient suffering of the Republican Liberals of this country, and such is now the necessity which impels them to oppose their invaders: The history of the present Clergy of the United States, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all having, in direct object, the establishment of a Priestly Hierarchy on the ruins of our Government. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world:—
“They have denied us the right of believing the evidence of our own sense.
“They have treated us with haughty disdain and abuse, not condescending to associate among us, except to sow the seeds of their popular mythology, or to beg our money, under pretensions of replenishing their Lord’s Treasury; and when our money was thus extorted from us, they have put it on their persons, in the shape of gay and fashionable clothing.
“They have refused to impart their ‘word of life’ to large districts of people, because those people refused to support them in affluence; a thing with them indispensable, and in which they are pampered by slaves and fools only.
“They have collected together large bodies of our citizens, at places uncomfortable, unusual, and distant from their houses; for the sole purpose of fatiguing and scaring them into a belief of their holy fables.
“They have frequently invoked the wrath of heaven upon our heads, for opposing, with manly firmness, their invasions on the rights of the people.
“They have continued, notwithstanding such opposition, to extort, from the laboring poor, large sums of money to support their pious splendour; the people in the mean time, being scared out of that money which should have bought bread for their starving children.
“They have endeavored to prevent the spread of TRUTH, by intercepting our liberal Publications in the mail-bags; knowing, as they do, that they are unable to oppose them on fair and honorable ground, so they creep up in the dark, and stab their enemy.
“They have obstructed the administration of justice by screening a clerical murderer from the penalties of the law.
“They have striven to ruin us in our private avocations, by traducing our characters, and withholding their patronage.
“They have manufactured an innumerable swarm of preachers, and sent them among us, to harass our citizens, and eat out their sustenance.
“They have persecuted us from place to place; and not been satisfied with following us in the country, they have hunted us down into the cities, and set out their watchmen.
“They have crept sneakingly along after us, till they have caught us alone, and have then striven by threats and persuasions, to make us believe their fabulous nonsense, that we might become their dupes and supporters.
“They have attempted to render their Ecclesiastical Power independent of our Civil Constitution; and unknowingly ally our laws; giving, in every instance, their general opposition to such encroachments.
“For quartering a large number of lazy Priests among us.
“For protecting them by false laws, for found murders.
“For cutting off the friendly intercourse of society.
“For extorting money from us against our inclinations.
“For depriving us, in many cases, of the means of enlightening our minds.
“For combining together, to accuse us of pretended offences against society, which they call their ‘holy stuff.’
“For carrying a liberal miscellaneous education among our children, and common schools for that object; and establishing, instead, innumerable Sunday schools, the object of which, is to poison the tender minds of our children, with Sectarian superstitions, and to hold the young mind in ignorance, awe and mental darkness; thereby making it a fit dupe and accessary to all their ambitious schemes.
“For persuading our children, by stratagem, to their Sunday schools, and then giving them Tracts and Primers, calculated to lead the young and innocent mind into a belief of witches, bugbears, ghosts, and other fabulous beings.
“For striving to rob us of our thinking privileges; declaring themselves vested with the power of thinking for us in all cases whatsoever.
“They have consigned us to their hell—declaring us unworthy of their Elysium; and have waged war against us.
“They have drained our pockets, terrified our women and children, burnt our Liberal Publications, and blockaded our channels of information.
“They are at this time transporting large armies of foreign missionaries, to complete the work of death, dessolation, tyranny and adultry, already commenced: with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and entirely unworthy the leaders of a civilized society.
“They have constrained our Liberal believers living in their settlements, to fall in with their idolatry, and to become the unwilling persecutors of their own friends and brethren.
“They have excited family insurrections among us; and have turned loose upon our defenceless women, their unprincipled journeymen soul-savers, whose known rule of practice is, an undistinguished violation of all female chastity.
“In every stage of these oppressions we have entreated them to desist, in the most humble terms; our repeated complaints have met only with repeated acts of oppression. A priesthood whose characters are thus marked by every act which may define seditious tyrants are unfit to be teachers of a free Republican people.
“Nor have we been indecorous or illiberal in our conduct towards our converted citizens. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their Clergy to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the spirit of our constitution. We have appealed to their republican justice and magnanimity; and we have reminded them of the persecution of our Pilgrim Fathers and of their solemn sufferings in the wilderness of Plymouth; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our friendship and pleasant intercourse. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce, in the necessity which announces our separation; and hold them as we do all other tyrants, enemies to science, truth, virtue, happiness and republicanism.
“We, therefore, the Republican Liberals of these United States solemnly publish and declare, that we, and the said Clergy, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and subordinate citizens of this Republic, we have full right and power to think for ourselves, on all subjects and questions.”
*The Declaration was drawn up a number of years since by a gentleman in Galena, Illinois.
After the cloth was removed the following regular toasts, together with volunteer toasts were drank, accompanied with the discharge of cannon.
1st. Thomas Paine.—The untiring advocate of free enquiry, and the uncompromising enemy of every theological bigot.
2d. Common Sense.—A fire-brand hurled by the Hercules hand of Paine to the bosom of America, and kindled the love of liberty in every patriotic son of Columbia.
3d. The Crisis—The aromatic stimulant which preserved our infant republic from the pestilential infections of Toryism through the American revolution.
4th. The Rights of Man.—One of the “noblest effusions that ever flowed from a political pen.”
5th. The Age of Reason.—A star of pearl to the unprejudiced sons of freedom, but to the bigoted clergy a dagger; and may people of all ages—
[The remainder of this toast is obscured/illegible in the scan.]
We have the Oration that was delivered at the celebration, by Dr. Underhill of Cleveland, but have not room for it in this “World,” but it shall receive our first attention in the next.