Horace Mann: “Hence our laws bar a right of action, otherwise incontrovertible, after that tacit abandonment of which the mere lapse…”

Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.

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

But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,--yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,--these are “factitious and imaginary” causes of…

The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.