Documents Relating to the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 133114938X ISBN 13: 9781331149385

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2024

Synopsis

Excerpt from Documents Relating to the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown

The relation of the owners of the Ursuline Convent to the commonwealth of Massachusetts is a subject which may well occupy the public attention. It involves a great principle of public justice, and the facts of the case present one of the gravest questions that can engage the attention of a free people, or awaken the inquiries and stimulate the exertions of individuals. If, in the pauses of political agitation, leisure and attention can be found for the calm, dispassionate consideration of what concerns our highest honor, our good name, our abiding interests as a people whose government is founded and should be administered in justice, this, among other objects, may claim our care. Fortunately, it is the sole blemish on the honor of the country, for which we of Massachusetts are in any wise peculiarly responsible, or over which we have exclusive jurisdiction; and it is consolatory to reflect, that, when this question shall have been met upon its merits, and disposed of according to its merits, if no untoward accident shall befall our public affairs, Massachusetts will stand before the world not merely as a model republic, but as a state, in which individual rights rest on the imperishable foundations of both the power and the disposition to be just.

It is not proposed here to argue the merits of the question between the owners of the convent and the commonwealth of Massachusetts, but merely to state it. It will be convenient, however, to state first what the question is not. It is not a question in the smallest degree analogous to the application of a college or other literary institution for aid from the state; and therefore it is not to be answered by those arguments which are commonly deemed a sufficient response to such applications. These owners ask for no encouragement, or aid, and no one asks aid or encouragement for them. They, being citizens of the commonwealth, were possessed of certain property; they paid upon it all the taxes assessed by the laws; their right to its possession, enjoyment, use and absolute dominion, was the same as that of every other citizen to his property, a right without which civil society docs not and cannot exist. This property was torn from them and struck out of existence.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2024
• ISBN 10: 133114938X
• ISBN 13: 9781331149385
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 36