With a somewhat too boastful spirit, perhaps, have we challenged the admiration of the world for our devotion to liberty; but an enthusiasm for the rights of man is so holy a passion, that even its excesses are not devoid of the beautiful.
Horace Mann: “With a somewhat too boastful spirit, perhaps, have we challenged the admiration of the world for our devotion to…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann acknowledges the pride in America's commitment to liberty, while recognizing the potential for excess in this enthusiasm.
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These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the claims of justice and mercy left among us.
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
The liberty of voting includes all other liberties.
I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.





