On the record
The statement may be all very true, if the law be constitutional; but suppose the law to be unconstitutional, would not the statement be superlatively absurd?
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “The statement may be all very true, if the law be constitutional; but suppose the law to be unconstitutional, would not…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann points out the absurdity of justifying a law based on its presumed constitutionality without questioning it.
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More from Horace Mann
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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.
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 liberty of voting includes all other liberties.
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