legal obedience Quotes
The speech was in the midst of a very bitter strike where goons and strikebreakers assaulted miners and a few miners resorted to violence.
Jackson was then a rising young military officer and politician. He had been found guilty of abusing his power to declare and implement martial law. He was a character. He bragged about his “respectful submission” to the law by paying the fine, but ignored the legal violations he committed to be sentenced to the fine.
In Ireland at the time the established church—the Protestant Anglican Church of Ireland—had the legal right to collect annual Tithes from the population in order to fund the activities of the Church. One difficulty however, was that the majority of the population were Roman Catholics. The poorest of them could not afford the tithe payments to any church. Whereas in the past, the Protestant Church officials did not force the issue of tithe collection from the poor, in about 1830 they changed and seized the property of the poor (Protestants and Catholics) and auctioned it off to pay for the tithe. The Cardinal organized this campaign of using the technicalities of the laws to combat the Tithe. For example, the poor Catholic farmers gave title to their cattle to the Catholic Church and the Archbishop then had them feed and care for “his” cattle in exchange for their ability to use the milk for drinking and cheese.
He was referring to the fact that sometimes when the United States lost a decision of international trade organizations, we would not follow it.
