"Nothing safe while legislature is in session" (1866? Webster? Bierce?)

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

> Does Fred have this famous quote? What's the full passage?
> ...
> 16 June 1971, New York <i>Times</i>, "Letters to the Editor,"  pg. 44:
> "No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in
> session..." is a quote lifted mirthlessly, not from a 1971 Times editorial but
> from a 105-year-old New York court decision [1 Tucker 248 (N. Y. Surr. 1866)].

The Yale Book of Quotations has the following:

The error arose from want of diligent watchfulness in respect to
legislative changes.  He did not remember that it might be necessary to
look at the statutes of the year before.  Perhaps he had forgotten the
saying, that "no man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
Legislature is in session."
        Gideon J. Tucker, Final Accounting in the Estate of A.B. (1866)

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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