“No government can be strong and flourishing while the national character is weak and degraded. A government must flourish and decay with its subjects; and, when a prince makes a law or performs an action which has a tendency to injure the character or prosperity of the nation, he injures himself.”
~Benjamin Robbins Curtis

American lawyer, judge, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1851 to 1857) Benjamin Robbins Curtis was born on this day in 1809.