Col. Robert Ingersoll contributes a paper to the Corbin-Jewish controversy in the form of a letter to the Hon. J. J. Noah. It is replete with characteristic "hits" and supplies what was wanting to the completeness of Mr. Mark's satire. Mr. Ingersoll's scorn of Christians is quite equal to the popular idea of the Christian scorn of Jews. It is with very fine irony that the lecturer on "The Mistakes of Moses" calls attention to the fact that the Jews furnished their persecutors, the Christians, with a system of theology; that the Jews "are the only people according to the dogmas of the day with whom the Almighty ever decided to have any intercourse whatever"; that all inspiration comes through the Jews, and that all the prophets were of that despised race. Then he deals a telling blow to Jewish pride of descent by referring to Abraham's shabby treatment of Hagar and his "willingness to murder his own son," to David as "the murderer," and to Solomon as the "Mormon." The following is very characteristic:

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"When we remember that God selected a Jewess for His mother, passing by the women of India, Egypt, Athens and Rome, as well as the grandmothers of Mr. Corbin, it is hardly in good taste for the worshipers of that same God to hold the Jews in scorn."

If the humor of this passage is rather coarse, that part of it which represents God as "passing by the grandmothers of Mr. Corbin" is not wanting in pungency. On the whole, the latter is not quite good natured.

It is cynical, and its cynicism is unrelieved by that sweetness of temper for which Mr. Ingersoll is so justly distinguished. The three subjects of it - Corbin, the Jew, and the Christian - each in turn comes in for a share of the taunts of the Infidel.

Mr. Ingersoll, however, falls into the error of assumming that the controversy is wholly religious, whereas the fact is, there is no element of religious persecution in it.

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Nothing is more certain than that Mr. Corbin has not excluded the Jews from the Manhattan Beach Hotel because they profess the Hebrew faith. Publicans are not famous for their devotion to theological tenets and dogmas. They desire to fill their houses with the most profitable guests. If they exclude a class, it is because they firmly believe that another and more profitable class will promptly supply the places made vacant by the act of exclusion. In proscribing the Jews, Mr. Corbin has undertaken to make from the community a selection of guests. In a word, in refusing hospitality to the Jews, he hopes to secure a more acceptable and more profitable patronage from anti-Jews. Nor is it to be presumed that he has reached this conclusion of his own motion. Americans, Germans, English, and Irish, who find many of the Jews disagreeable table and parlor associates, have protested against their presence in large numbers at the Manhattan Beach Hotel. It follows that the apparent hostility of Corbin to the Jews is in fact the hostility of a class of his guests. Corbin surrenders the control of his hostelry to these snobbish classes. He ought to reflect, however, that from the moment he consents to such surrender, his hotel ceases to be a public house. The stuck-up class, who insists upon the exclusion of the Jews, might with equal propriety demand the exclusion of the Methodists, or the Baptists, or the Free-Thinkers.

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And if the controversy were in fact of a religious character, we should soon have Jewish hotels, Methodist hotels, and Roman-Catholic hotels. Fortunately, as we have already remarked, it involves no religious element whatever. Mr. Corbin's non-Jewish guests object to the Jews on account of their alleged peculiar habits.

But it is to be regretted that so strong an incentive to the continued isolation of the Jews should be offered, as is found in their exclusion from the hospitality or rapacity of the great watering-place hotels of the country. Mr. Ingersoll makes this no less philosophical than just observation:

"Every American should resent every insult to humanity, for while the rights of the lowest are trampled upon, the liberties of the highest are not safe."

We insist that the Negro, clothed with the rights of citizenship, shall have the lesser right to occupy such public conveyance as he chooses to employ for hire, whether his companionship is agreeable or otherwise to his fellow-passengers. But the right of the Jews to enjoy the hospitality of a publican's house is of precisely the same character. If Corbin may exclude a thousand Jews from the Manhattan Beach House, the proprietor of the Palmer or the 5Grand Pacific may with equal propriety exclude one Jew or a dozen from his establishment.

When Frederick Douglas was excluded from the public table of a hotel on account of the color of his skin, all good people were indignant. Whatever the feeling may be at present in regard to the act of Corbin, time will surely evoke a powerful public sentiment in condemnation of it. The persecution of the Jews, whether on account of their exclusive religion, or their social habits, or display of diamonds, on the heel of the political events of the last twenty years, is monstrously anomalous. Those who have the temerity to undertake the enterprise, will fall pierced by the shafts of indignation and ridicule.