Standing here, then, before you, my constituents, to give account of my stewardship, I have to say, that with voice and vote, by expostulation and by remonstrance, by all means in my power, I have, to the full extent of my ability, resisted the passage of all these laws.
Mann explains his moral obligation to resist unjust laws as a representative.
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A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
The kidnapper, Alberti, now lies in a Pennsylvania prison for carrying away a mother and her child; but the mother and the child are now groaning under the lash of a southern taskmaster.
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.
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