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Modern Persecution, or Married Woman's Liabilities

From: Modern Persecution
Creator: Elizabeth P. W. Packard (author)
Date: 1873
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 1  Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16

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Page 92:

1945  

There were certainly some of the most reasonable persons in the world imprisoned there, apparently hopelessly, simply because some individual has chosen to represent them so, and they justify themselves in this accusation, on the plea that they have a right to their opinions.

1946  

So they have the same right to their opinion that a traitor has to justify himself, on the ground that it is his opinion that the government ought to be overthrown! Traitors have a right to their opinions as traitors, and they also have a right to the penalty which the law attaches to such opinions when practically expressed.

1947  

The defamer pleads that he has a right to destroy the character of one whom he regards as an errorist, since he claims these errors injure society, and therefore a benevolent regard to community demands the slander. Now we never have a right to do wrong, and no evil can be justified on the ground that good requires it. Goodness is never dependent Upon sin for its maintenance or support. Right and justice are sometimes demanded by goodness, but never does it demand wrong or wickedness for its defense.

1948  

It is the highest treason to our Heavenly Father's government, to try to destroy the moral influence of a member of his family in order to promote their own selfish purposes. It is an attempt to overthrow God's government, in the individual, to represent him as insane when he is not, for it is his accountability he is thus trying to destroy.

1949  

That it is a crime to call a sane person an insane one appears in the mental torture this charge brings with it. It is very embarassing to a sensitive person to be looked upon in all they say or do, as an insane person. The least mistake, a slip of the tongue, a look, a gesture, are all liable to be interpreted as insanity, and the least difference of opinion, however reasonable or plausible, is liable to share the same reproach.

1950  

So that an advocate for any new truth, or any progressive science which must necessarily dethrone human dogmas, while under this charge, is under a paralyzing influence.

1951  

But let any other person who is not thus branded, advance the same ideas, they would be regarded as evidence of intelligence of a superior order. And although truth is not changed by the medium through which it passes, yet, as the world now is, in its undeveloped state, it more readily listens to a new truth coming through a medium of acknowledged sanity, than when it comes through one who has the diploma of insanity attached to his name. But still the medium, is not the truth, neither is the truth enhanced or disminished -sic- by the medium who utters it.

1952  

Again, it is a crime because hundreds are kept there to whom an imprisonment is as much of an outrage as slavery is to the bondman. Because some insane persons are sometimes dangerous, it is thought right to keep all who are called insane, prisoners! Thus, the most sensible people on earth, are exposed to suffer a life-long imprisonment, from the folly of some undeveloped misguided person.

1953  

And the tendency of imprisonment itself, is sadly detrimental to a person who has intelligence enough to realize that he is held under lock and key.

1954  

To persist in treating them as though they were unable to take care of themselves, as to undermine self-reliance and self-respect. In short, it tends to destroy all that which is noble and aspiring in humanity, more directly, and more surely than any course the great enemy of the race has hitherto devised. To subject a human being to the legitimate influence of this insane asylum system, is like the Hindoos throwing their children into the Ganges, most of whom are drowned of course, but the few who do escape are those who retain life with peculiar vigor and tenacity.

1955  

Yes, I am sure that any one who can go through there and come out unharmed may well be considered as insanity proof.

1956  

God's grace must work in them, to will and to do right in all things, or no security is granted them; and these few cases of successful resistance are like the pure gold, the hotter the fire, the purer it becomes. The Christian graces which are there called into exercise, are thus strengthened, purified, concentrated, intensified, so that the minor temptations and onsets of the powers of darkness are now looked upon as mere skirmishes, compared with the fierce, deadly battles of this asylum life.

1957  

Is not the slander of insanity the most cruel kind of defamation that can be instigated against another? From what right does it not exclude us, except that of eating and sleeping like animals?

1958  

Nothing more or less.

1959  

And can this highest of all wrongs and insults to a human being, be looked upon with any degree of allowance, by him who bestowed these moral natures upon man? -- the very godhead thus crushed out of a human being, and he be made to believe that he is only a brute beast, with no claims upon his fellow creatures, higher than theirs -- to put a high toned, sensitive, developed human soul upon this level, by base design; for base purposes, by the basest of malicious lies?

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