Zephaniah Swift

51% in a moment of rage can dispose of whatever right they want to dispose of.

Here's what Zephaniah Swift had to say.

When more of the government became immediately elective, more of disorder followed.

So far as we approach to pure democracy, we are thereby approaching to the region of tumult and disorder because the majority gets to do whatever they want.

In the Revolutionary period were important pamphlets by Nathaniel Appleton, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and James Swan, an interesting forensic dispute at Harvard in 1773, and a remarkably vigorous address to the rulers of America, supposed to have been written by John Dickinson.

After the close of the Revolution, in connection with movements for emancipation in the states, there were anti-slavery orations by Dr. George Buchanan and William Pickney in Maryland, Theodore Dwight, Jonathan Edwards, and Zephaniah Swift in Connecticut, and David Rice in Kentucky, while Noah Webster of Connecticut contributed an important essay on the effects of slavery on morals and industry in And Judge Tucker of Virginia prepared an elaborate dissertation on slavery with a plan for its gradual abolition in the state.

To the cause of national emancipation, the Quaker philanthropist Warner Mifflin contributed by his words as well as his work.

And Thomas Brannigan, the Penidental Tyrant, and John Parrish, the forerunner of Joshua R. Giddens, uttered significant prophecies and proposed definite remedies.

In New England, the rapid disappearance of slavery in the Northern States led to a cessation of activity.

But in Connecticut, where even the children born after the passage of a general emancipation act were still to be held in servitude, several young lawyers cooperated with the theologians in the endeavor to hasten or complete the process of emancipation.

Zephaniah Swift, afterwards Chief Justice of Connecticut, was prominent in this anti-slavery movement.

Noah Webster, the great lexicographer, at that time engaged in the practice of law, devoted some of his talent for research to the production of an important essay on the moral and economic effects of slavery.