On the record
He is to decide that a man owes life-long service from himself, and from all the children of his loins.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “He is to decide that a man owes life-long service from himself, and from all the children of his loins.”
Editor's note · Context
Mann argues that commissioners have the authority to impose lifelong servitude, a significant moral and legal issue.
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My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor.
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.
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.
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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