Charles Sumner - Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Charles Sumner

Equality of rights is the first of rights.
Personal motto of Radical Republican senator and lawyer Charles Sumner.

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Thought of the Day

I wish for my own part there were no such thing as Political-Economy. I mean not now the mere name of the study: but I wish there had never been any necessity for directing our attention to the study itself. If men had always been secured in person and property, and left at full liberty to employ both as they saw fit; and had merely been precluded from unjust interference with each other — had the most perfect freedom of intercourse between all mankind been always allowed — had there never been any wars — nor (which in that case would have easily been avoided) any taxation — then, though every exchange that took place would have been one of the phenomena of which Political-Economy takes cognizance, all would have proceeded so smoothly, that probably no attention would ever have been called to the subject. The transactions of society would have been like the play of the lungs, the contractions of the muscles, and the circulation of the blood, in a healthy person; who scarcely knows that these functions exist. But as soon as they are impeded and disordered, our attention is immediately called to them.
Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832), Lecture III.

— Richard Whately

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