True, it is useless to put upon our statute books an astronomical law, regulating sunrise, or high tides; but that is physical and beyond the jurisdiction of man, while slavery belongs to morals, and is within the jurisdiction of man.
Mann argues that while some laws may be beyond human control, the moral implications of slavery are within our jurisdiction.
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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 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.
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.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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