The business relative to free blacks shall be transacted by a
committee of twenty-four persons, annually elected by ballot at a
meeting of this Society, in the month called April, and in order to
perform the different services with expedition, regularity and energy
this committee shall resolve itself into the following sub-committees,
viz.:

I. A Committee of Inspection, who shall superintend the morals,
general conduct, and ordinary situation of the free negroes, and
afford them advice and instruction, protection from wrongs, and other
friendly offices.

II. A Committee of Guardians, who shall place out children and young
people with suitable persons, that they may (during a moderate time
of apprenticeship or servitude) learn some trade or other business
of subsistence. The committee may effect this partly by a persuasive
influence on parents and the persons concerned, and partly by
cooeperating with the laws, which are or may be enacted for this
and similar purposes. In forming contracts of these occasions, the
committee shall secure to the Society as far as may be practicable the
right of guardianship over the person so bound.

III. A Committee of Education, who shall superintend the school
instruction of the children and youth of the free blacks. They
may either influence them to attend regularly the schools already
established in this city, or form others with this view; they shall,
in either case, provide, that the pupils may receive such learning as
is necessary for their future situation in life, and especially a deep
impression of the most important and generally acknowledged moral and
religious principles. They shall also procure and preserve a regular
record of the marriages, births, and manumissions of all free blacks.

IV. The Committee of Employ, who shall endeavor to procure constant
employment for those free negroes who are able to work; as the want of
this would occasion poverty, idleness, and many vicious habits. This
committee will by sedulous inquiry be enabled to find common labor for
a great number; they will also provide that such as indicate proper
talents may learn various trades, which may be done by prevailing upon
them to bind themselves for such a term of years as shall compensate
their masters for the expense and trouble of instruction and
maintenance. The committee may attempt the institution of some simple
and useful manufactures which will require but little skill, and also
may assi