On the record
And think you that this is the country, and this the age, in which the republican maxim that the MAJORITY must govern, can be long and barbarously reversed?
Said by
Lewis Tappan
Source
gutenberg.orgLewis Tappan: “And think you that this is the country, and this the age, in which the republican maxim that the MAJORITY must govern…”
Editor's note · Context
Tappan questions the sustainability of a system where the majority is oppressed, emphasizing the importance of majority rule.
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We surely need not detain you with farther details on this head, to convince you what an enormous sacrifice of happiness and prosperity you are offering on the altar of slavery.
The clog that has stayed the march of her people, the incubus that has weighed down her enterprise, strangled her commerce, kept sealed her exhaustless fountains of mineral wealth, and paralyzed her arts, manufactures and improvement, is…
It, is however, worthy of remark, that its cultivation affords a livelihood to only a small proportion of the free inhabitants; and scarcely to any of those we are now addressing.
In a community so unenlightened as yours, it is a matter of course, that the arts and sciences must languish, and the industry and enterprise of the country be oppressed by a general torpor.