is permitted to offer a witness of his own
color, however well established may be his character for
intelligence and veracity, to prove his rights or his wrongs; and
hence in a multitude of cases, justice is denied in despite of the
Constitution; and why denied? Solely from a foolish and wicked
prejudice against color.

6. IMPEDIMENTS TO EDUCATION.

No people have ever professed so deep a conviction of the importance
of popular education as ourselves, and no people have ever resorted
to such cruel expedients to perpetuate abject ignorance. More than
one third of the whole population of the slave States are prohibited
from learning even to read, and in some of them free men, if with
dark complexions, are subject to stripes for teaching their own
children. If we turn to the free States, we find that in all of them,
without exception, the prejudices and customs of society oppose
almost insuperable obstacles to the acquisition of a liberal
education by colored youth. Our academies and colleges are barred
against them. We know there are instances of young men with dark
skins having been received, under peculiar circumstances, into
northern colleges; but we neither know nor believe, that there have
been a dozen such instances within the last thirty years.

Colored children are very generally excluded from our common schools,
in consequence of the prejudices of teachers and parents. In some of
our cities there are schools _exclusively_ for their use, but in the
country the colored population is usually too sparse to justify such
schools; and white and black children are rarely seen studying under
the same roof; although such cases do sometimes occur, and then they
are confined to elementary schools. Some colored young men, who
could bear the expense, have obtained in European seminaries the
education denied them in their native land.

It may not be useless to cite an instance of the malignity with
which the education of the blacks is opposed. The efforts made in
Connecticut to prevent the establishment of schools of a higher order
than usual for colored pupils, are too well known to need a recital
here; and her BLACK ACT, prohibiting the instruction of colored
children from other States, although now expunged from her statute
book through the influence of abolitionists, will long be remembered
to the opprobrium of her citizens. We ask attention to the following
illustration of public opinion in another New England Stat