_Color makes no difference in minds_.

It is slavery alone that has degraded the negro." Another planter, by way of replying to our inquiry on this subject, sent for a negro child of five years, who read with great fluency in any part of the Testament to which we turned her.

"Now," said the gentleman, "I should be ashamed to let you hear my own son, of the same age with that little girl, read after her." We put the following questions to the Wesleyan missionaries: "Are the negroes as _apt to learn_, as other people in similar circumstances ?" Their written reply was this: "We think they are; the same diversified qualities of intellect appear among them, as among other people." We put the same question to the Moravian missionaries, to the clergymen, and to the teachers of each denomination, some of whom, having taught schools in England, were well qualified to judge between the European children and the negro children; and we uniformly received substantially the same answer.

Such, however, was the air of surprise with which our question was often received, that it required some courage to repeat it.

Sometimes it excited a smile, as though we could not be serious in the inquiry.