In Italy, the pope decides what books may be read; in Austria, the emperor decides what books may be written; but we are more degraded than the subject of pontiff or Cæsar, if we are to be told what topics we may discuss.
Mann critiques the control of discourse in other countries, asserting that the U.S. should not follow suit.
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Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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.
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