Our laws and institutions are all framed so as to encourage the poor man, and, by education, to elevate his children above the condition of their parents; but their laws and institutions all tend to aggrandize the rich, and to perpetuate power in their hands.
Mann critiques the legal and institutional frameworks that favor the wealthy over the poor in society.
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Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
Mere knowledge, without the moral sense, can take no cognizance of the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong; and so the blind instinct, unguided by knowledge, will be forever at fault in its conclusions.
Did the law ever contemplate so cruel and revengeful a proceeding?
The aged and the infant she left for the vultures; but the strong men and the strong women she drove, scourged and bleeding, to the shore.
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