course to pursue.

We have speculated and moralised much about equality--claiming to be as
good as our neighbors, and every body else--all of which, may do very
well in ethics--but not in politics. We live in society among men,
conducted by men, governed by rules and regulations. However arbitrary,
there are certain policies that regulate all well organized institutions
and corporate bodies. We do not intend here to speak of the legal
political relations of society, for those are treated on elsewhere. The
business and social, or voluntary and mutual policies, are those that
now claim our attention. Society regulates itself--being governed by
mind, which like water, finds its own level. "Like seeks like," is a
principle in the laws of matter, as well as of mind. There is such a
thing as inferiority of things, and positions; at least society has made
them so; and while we continue to live among men, we must agree to all
_just_ measures--all those we mean, that do not necessarily infringe on
the rights of others. By the regulations of society, there is no
equality of attainments. By this, we do not wish to be understood as
advocating the actual equal attainments of every individual; but we mean
to say, that if these attainments be necessary for the elevation of the
white man, they are necessary for the elevation of the colored man. That
some colored men and women, in a like proportion to the whites, should
be qualified in all the attainments possessed by them. It is one of the
regulations of society the world over, and we shall have to conform to
it, or be discarded as unworthy of the associations of our fellows.

Cast our eyes about us and reflect for a moment, and what do we behold!
every thing that presents to view gives evidence of the skill of the
white man. Should we purchase a pound of groceries, a yard of linen, a
vessel of crockery-ware, a piece of furniture, the very provisions that