The language of the statutes is general, and applies equally to all children, of whatever race or color.

If we examine the text of this statute, we shall find nothing to sustain the rule of exclusion which has been set up.

There is no language recognizing any discrimination of race or color.

This is the Common School, equally free to all the inhabitants.

There is nothing establishing an exclusive or separate school for any particular class, rich or poor, Catholic or Protestant, white or black.

In the eye of the law there is but one class, where all interests, opinions, conditions, and colors commingle in harmony,--excluding none, therefore comprehending all.

The Courts of Massachusetts, in harmony with the Constitution and the Laws, have never recognized any discrimination founded on race or color, in the administration of the Common Schools, but have constantly declared the equal rights of…

The schools required by the statute are to be maintained for the benefit of the whole town, as it is the wise policy of the law to give all the inhabitants equal privileges for the education of their children in the Public Schools.

Nor is it in the power of the majority to deprive the minority of this privilege....

They cannot lawfully omit any, and thus deprive them of the benefits of our invaluable system of free schools." Thus at every point the Court has guarded the Equal Rights of all.

It is easy to see that the exclusion of colored children from the Public Schools is a constant inconvenience to them and their parents, which white children and white parents are not obliged to bear.

Here the facts are plain and unanswerable, showing a palpable violation of Equality.

I am at a loss to understand how anybody can assert that they are.

But it is not brought to every black man's door.

He is obliged to go for it, to travel for it, to walk for it,--often a great distance.

If it be met by the suggestion, that the inconvenience is trivial, and such as the law will not notice, I reply, that it is precisely such as to reveal an existing inequality, and therefore the law cannot fail to notice it.

It was a paltry tax on tea, laid by a Parliament where they were not represented, that aroused our fathers to the struggles of the Revolution.

They did not feel the inconvenience of the tax, but they felt its oppression.

Let it not be said, then, that in the present case the inconvenience is too slight to justify the appeal I make in behalf of colored children for Equality before the Law.

Looking beyond the facts of this case, it is apparent that the inconvenience from the exclusion of colored children is such as to affect seriously the comfort and condition of the African race in Boston.

Colored parents, anxious for the education of their children, are compelled to live in the neighborhood of the schools, to gather about them,--as in Eastern countries people gather near a fountain or a well.

The liberty which belongs to the white man, of choosing his home, is not theirs.

Every toll paid by this parent, as every step taken by the children, testifies to that inequality which I now arraign.

As they grow in knowledge they will rise and call him blessed; but at the same time they will brand as accursed that arbitrary discrimination of color in the Common Schools of Boston which rendered it necessary for their father, out of…

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.