There is no such thing as sliding up hill.
In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality --
that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient?

The amount of it is: if the majority vote the Devil to be God,
the minority will live and behave accordingly--
and obey the successful candidate,
trusting that, some time or other, by some Speaker's casting-vote, perhaps,
they may reinstate God.
_

The judges and lawyers-- simply as such --
and all men of expediency, try this case by a very low and incompetent standard.
They consider, not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right,
but whether it is what they call constitutional.
Is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity?

In important moral and vital questions, like this, it is just as impertinent to ask
whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not.

Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and state and church....

(kildetekst)
(notater hos goodreads)