f the State of which he is a citizen,) shall tarry within
this Commonwealth longer than two months; and on complaint a justice
shall order him to depart in ten days; and if he do not then, the
justice may commit such African or Negro to the House of Correction,
there to be kept at hard labor; and at the next term of the Court of
Common Pleas, he shall be tried, and if convicted of remaining as
aforesaid, shall be whipped not exceeding ten lashes; and if he or she
shall not _then_ depart, such process shall be repeated, and punishment
inflicted, _toties quoties_." Stat. 1788, Ch. 54.

An honorable Haytian or Brazilian, who visited this country for business
or information, might come under this law, unless public opinion
rendered it a mere dead letter.

There is among the colored people an increasing desire for information,
and laudable ambition to be respectable in manners and appearance. Are
we not foolish as well as sinful, in trying to repress a tendency so
salutary to themselves, and so beneficial to the community? Several
individuals of this class are very desirous to have persons of their own
color qualified to teach something more than mere reading and writing.
But in the public schools, colored children are subject to many
discouragements and difficulties; and into the private schools they
cannot gain admission. A very sensible and well-informed colored woman
in a neighboring town, whose family have been brought up in a manner
that excited universal remark and approbation, has been extremely
desirous to obtain for her eldest daughter the advantages of a private
school; but she has been resolutely repulsed on account of her
complexion. The girl is a very light mulatto, with great modesty and
propriety of manners; perhaps no young person in the Commonwealth was
less likely to have a bad influence on her associates. The clergyman
respected the family, and he remonstrated with the instructer; but while
the latter admitted the injustice of the thing, he excused himself by
saying such a step would occasion the loss of all his white scholars.

In a town adjoining Boston, a well behaved colored boy was kept out of
the public school more than a year, by vote of the trustees. His mother,
having some information herself, knew the importance of knowledge,
and was anxious to obtain it for her family. She wrote repeatedly and
urgently; and the schoolmaster himself told me that the correctness of
her spelling, and the neatnes