The paths of political distinction have been barred against them by an arbitrary denial of the right of suffrage, and consequent ineligibility to office.

Thus a large and powerful class of incitements to mental effort, which have been operating continually upon the whites, have never once stirred the sensibilities nor waked the ambition of the colored community.

Parents, however wealthy, had no inducement to educate their sons for the learned professions, since no force of talent nor extent of acquirement could hope to break down the granite walls and iron bars which prejudice had erected round the pulpit, the bar, and the bench.

From the same cause there was very little encouragement to acquire property, to seek education, to labor for the graces of cultivated manners, or even to aspire to ordinary respectability, since not even the poor favor of social intercourse with the whites, of participating in the civilities and courtesies of every day life, was granted them.
The crushing power of a prevailing licentiousness, has also been added to the other discouragements of the colored people.

Why should parents labor to amass wealth enough, and much of course it required, to send their daughters to Europe to receive their educations, if they were to return only to become the victims of an all-whelming concubinism! It is a fact, that in many cases young ladies, who have been sent to England to receive education, have, after accomplishing themselves in all the graces of womanhood, returned to the island to become the concubines of white men.