Political Quotes

Horace Mann: “So the law of Maryland might be valid under the constitution of Maryland, and, therefore, binding upon the citizens of…”

On the record
So the law of Maryland might be valid under the constitution of Maryland, and, therefore, binding upon the citizens of Maryland; while the law of Congress, though framed in precisely the same words, would be repugnant to the constitution of the United States, and therefore have no validity.
Said by
Horace Mann
Free Soil · Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Mann explains how state laws can be valid under state constitutions while federal laws may be invalid under the U.S. Constitution, despite identical wording.

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

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Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?

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

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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.

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