p. 190 | Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · June 12, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 24

A Modern Inquisitor.

WHAT a perfectly inquisitorial disposition Census Superintendent Porter must have! First, he commissions the enumerator to inquire into the financial difficulties, the private defects, and secret diseases of all the people, with the idea of compelling answers under penalty of one hundred dollars. When he found this could not be made to work, he then undertook to get the physicians all over the country to violate their professional oaths and betray professional confidences, by revealing the private diseases and secret maladies of all their patients. Since he found that the physicians of the country were men too honorable to stoop to such shameful dealing, he now directs that where the persons themselves refuse to answer these wickedly hatched questions, the enumerator “should obtain the information by inquiry from neighbors, and enter it upon his schedule the same as if obtained from the head or some member of the family.” No doubt Mr. Porter, by this last effort, will obtain a host of information. In many instances “neighbors” know more about other people than those people know about themselves, and are ready to tell it. But anybody who would trust such “information” would have to be of as remarkable disposition as is the author of this inquisition himself. We doubt whether the records of the Papacy contain the names of a person more perfectly qualified for the office of Inquisitor-General than this record shows Census Superintendent Robert P. Porter to be.