But only a community blind to public justice and to public decency as well, could enact a law that in effect declares the poverty of the laborer to be a crime, in consideration of which he shall be deprived of the beggarly mite for which he is willing to give the sweat of his face.
Blaine criticizes a law that criminalizes poverty, emphasizing its moral implications.
Share
More from James Blaine
The two schools in short marked the dividing line between the radical and the conservative.
He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party.
With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined.
But in the treatment of the colored man, now proposed, there was absolute heartlessness and rank injustice.
Other voices in this conversation
