On the record
Cause and counsellor are alike; for the defence is as profligate as the act it defends.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann asserts that the defense of the Fugitive Slave Law is as morally corrupt as the law itself.
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So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.
Under such a practice with regard to indictments, coupled with such a practice in regard to bail, an accusation would be as fatal as crime itself, however innocent the accused might be.
This is the reciprocity of slave law.--to be forever liable to be proved guilty, but never able to prove himself innocent; to be subject to all punishments, but, through his own oath, to no protection.
Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen.
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