Political Quotes

Horace Mann: “Under each of the forty-one indictments against this prisoner for stealing, he is liable, if convicted, to be sentenced…”

On the record
Under each of the forty-one indictments against this prisoner for stealing, he is liable, if convicted, to be sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, which would make an aggregate imprisonment of more than eight hundred years.
Said by
Horace Mann
Free Soil · Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Mann illustrates the absurdity of facing multiple lengthy sentences for a single act of theft.

Share

More from Horace Mann

Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.

gutenberg.org

Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!

gutenberg.org

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.

gutenberg.org

My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor.

gutenberg.org

Other voices in this conversation