Word: customs
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Despite the weight of custom and commerce, the past decade has seen a very slowly growing opposition to slavery on both sides of the Atlantic. Much of it has been stirred by the belief that the rights of man are as universal as Jefferson has said. Thomas Paine of the Pennsylvania Magazine has published an article arguing that the slave, "who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold." Adds Dr. Benjamin Rush, a leader of a Philadelphia antislavery movement: "The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature, that it cannot...
...champions of individual rights. His name: George Mason. Afflicted with gout, he rode into Williamsburg almost two weeks late, yet he was instantly installed as a member of the committee to draw up a declaration of rights. With typical impatience, he declared that he found the committee "according to custom overcharged with useless members" who could be expected to offer "a thousand ridiculous and impracticable proposals." Mason promptly took charge. In debate, according to one expert, he was "neither flowing nor smooth, but his language was strong, his manner most impressive, and strengthened by a dash of cynicism when provocation...
...three of the nation's 32 papers are printed more frequently than once a week. The most prolific: Benjamin Towne's Evening Post, which was able to insert that brief mention of the Declaration in the first of its thrice-weekly issues right at press time. As is the custom in colonial newspapers, however, the momentous late news was simply inserted on a back page of the Post; readers who paid their two coppers for the paper had to read through earlier dispatches from London, Halifax, Williamsburg and New York before learning of the Declaration...
...Cleopatra, "Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety ... other women cloy the appetites they feed; but she makes hungry/ Where most she satisfies." Even the vows that she and Antony swear in lovers' defiance of the world are thunderously imperial. Says Antony: "Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the ranged empire fall!" and Cleopatra echoes, "Melt Egypt into Nile...
...sometime freelance, later as a staff member of TIME-LIFE Books. During this time, he turned out a book on the history of Italian-Americans, The Children of Columbus. Amfitheatrof has run up against the usual double take when people ask his name. Explains he: "In Italy, the custom is to spell out your name using an Italian city to represent each letter. In my case, it is Ancona, Milano, Firenze, Imola, etc. By the time I'm through, I've toured the country...