On the record
It provides for the creation of scores and hundreds of officers called “commissioners,” and upon these, it is said on high authority, to confer original and final jurisdiction on questions of human liberty.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann discusses the problematic delegation of judicial authority to commissioners under the Fugitive Slave Act.
Share
More from Horace Mann
He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.
Whoever intercepts knowledge, therefore, on its passage to a human soul; whoever strikes down the hand that is outstretched to grasp it, is guilty of one of the most heinous of offences.
The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Yet, by denying education to the slave, you destroy not merely the right, but the power, of personal examination in regard to all that most nearly concerns the soul’s interests.
Other voices in this conversation
