Now, this principle applies with tenfold force to legislators,--withholding and repelling them from passing any law which may involve the innocent in the fate of the guilty, or the free in the bondage of the enslaved.
Mann asserts that legislators should not pass laws that unjustly affect innocent individuals, particularly in the context of slavery.
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The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
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