Ohio legislators may deny that negroes and mulattoes are citizens, or people; but they are estopped by the very words of the statute just quoted, from denying that they are “persons.”  Now, by the Constitution every person, black as well as white, is to have justice administered to him without denial or delay.  But by the law, while any unknown white vagrant may be a witness in any case whatever, no black suitor 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 State.

In 1834 an academy was built by subscription in CANAAN, New Hampshire, and a charter granted by the legislature; and at a meeting of the proprietors it was determined to receive all applicants having “suitable moral and intellectual recommendations, without other distinctions;” in other words, without reference to complexion.  When this determination was made known, a TOWN MEETING was forthwith convened, and the following resolutions adopted, viz.