[46] Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., Vol. IV. pp. 206, 207.
These are interesting incidents belonging to the history of the Boston schools, but they cannot in any way affect the rights of colored people or the powers of the School Committee. These rights and these powers stand on the Constitution and Laws. Without adopting the suggestion of Jefferson, that one generation cannot by legislation bind its successors, all must agree that the assent of a few to an unconstitutional and illegal course nearly half a century ago, when their rights were imperfectly understood, cannot alter the Constitution and the Laws so as to bind their descendants forever in the thrall of Caste. Nor can the Committee derive from this assent, or from any lapse of time, powers in derogation of the Constitution and the Rights of Man.
It is clear that the sentiments of the colored people have now changed. The present case, and the deep interest which they manifest in it, thronging the Court to watch this discussion, attest the change. With increasing knowledge they have learned to know their rights, and feel the degradation to which they are doomed. In them revives the spirit of Paul, even as when he demanded, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" Their present effort is the token of a manly character, which this Court will respect and cherish.
But it is said that these separate schools are for the benefit of both colors, and of the Public Schools. In similar spirit Slavery is sometimes said to be for the benefit of master and slave, and of the country where it exists. There is a mistake in the one case as great as in the other. This is clear. Nothing unjust, nothing ungenerous, can be for the benefit of any person or any thing. From some seeming selfish superiority, or from the gratified vanity of class, short-sighted mortals may hope to draw permanent good; but even-handed justice rebukes these efforts and redresses the wrong. The whites themselves are injured by the separation. Who can doubt this? With the Law as their monitor, they are taught to regard a portion of the human family, children of God, created in his image, coequals in his love, as a separate and degraded class; they are taught practically to deny that grand revelation of Christianity, the Brotherhood of Man. Hearts, while yet tender with childhood, are hardened, and ever afterward testify to this legalized uncharitableness. Nursed in the sentiments of Caste, receiving it with the earliest food of knowledge, they are unable to eradicate it from their natures, and then weakly and impiously charge upon our Heavenly Father the prejudice derived from an unchristian school. Their characters are debased, and they become less fit for the duties of citizenship.