In its scornful rejection of all those common-law principles of evidence which have been ratified by the wisdom of ages; in the “summary” and piratical haste of its proceedings, and in the indelible blood with which its judgments are recorded, I believe it has not a parallel in the modern code of any civilized people.
Horace Mann: “In its scornful rejection of all those common-law principles of evidence which have been ratified by the wisdom of ages…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann critiques the Fugitive Slave Law for its disregard of established legal principles and its brutal enforcement.
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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.





