And what is the seventh amendment but a “declaratory and restrictive clause,” securing the trial by jury, in cases at common law, “where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars,” and abandoning it where the value is less?
Mann interprets the seventh amendment as a protective measure for the right to trial by jury in civil cases.
Share
More from Horace Mann
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.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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.
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.
Other voices in this conversation
