On the record
Homicide existed before law; the law came in subsequently, and declared that he who took an innocent man’s life without law, should lose his own by law.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “Homicide existed before law; the law came in subsequently, and declared that he who took an innocent man’s life without…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann draws a parallel between homicide and slavery, arguing that just because something existed before law does not make it a natural right.
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More from Horace Mann
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.
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
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.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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