Let it arouse itself and consider whether there be not room for exercise in the direction indicated, and whether it is not better to prevent disaster than to repair damages.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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Nor should patriotism be blinded by the mere name of freedom and justice, sounded so loudly to cover the deformities practised under their shelter.
Many of them would be found not only hollow, but basely deceptive.
It is well enough to laud the freedom of the land, but why not make the direct inquiry to find how much of it is real, and how much is fancied freedom, not to say genuine slavery?
It is well to assert that justice holds sway everywhere, but those who have had most occasion to find it, must hold their peace lest the fair delusion be dispelled.
Let the peace that is cried, the freedom that is lauded and the justice that is asserted, be subjected to the test of analysis, that it may be really known what principles enter into their composition.
It is much to be feared that when all the dross and foreign substances are separated, and the pure residuum only left, its proportion to the mass submitted would be lamentably small.
Individual enterprise, especially among Americans, has produced the most wonderful results.
Great minds have been obliged to operate singly and alone to develop their inspirations, ideas and conclusions.
On the contrary, many enterprises which have proved equally beneficial to the country have ruined those who projected them.
Thus the general welfare has been promoted by the sacrifice of individual interests.
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.