Political Quotes

Horace Mann: “The Presidents, all members of Congress, all judges upon the bench, have been in a dream for the last sixty years, and…”

On the record
The Presidents, all members of Congress, all judges upon the bench, have been in a dream for the last sixty years, and are now waked up and recalled to their senses by the charm of a newly-discovered reading of the constitution.
Said by
Horace Mann
Free Soil · Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Mann critiques the ignorance of government officials regarding constitutional interpretation over the past sixty years.

Share

More from Horace Mann

Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.

gutenberg.org

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

gutenberg.org

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.

gutenberg.org

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.

gutenberg.org

Other voices in this conversation