On the record
Like lotteries, or polygamy, or infanticide, it can legally exist in no land where the principles of the common law prevail, until it is legalized and sanctioned by a special law.
Source
gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “Like lotteries, or polygamy, or infanticide, it can legally exist in no land where the principles of the common law…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann argues that slavery, like other morally questionable practices, can only exist where local laws permit it, challenging its legality under common law.
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More from Horace Mann
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
The liberty of voting includes all other liberties.
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.
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