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.
Horace Mann: “The Presidents, all members of Congress, all judges upon the bench, have been in a dream for the last sixty years, and…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann critiques the ignorance of government officials regarding constitutional interpretation over the past sixty years.
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Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
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.
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.





