On the record
To prohibit Congress from doing one of these things, and to permit it to do the other, is straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel,--a whole caravan of camels!
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “To prohibit Congress from doing one of these things, and to permit it to do the other, is straining at a gnat and…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann uses a metaphor to critique the inconsistency in allowing Congress to legislate on slavery while prohibiting other actions.
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More from Horace Mann
These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the claims of justice and mercy left among us.
Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
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.
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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