11
A finished education form the basis of all future success,
and the deeper we dive in the limpid truths of reason and
philosophy the higher we can rise when we engage our
minds in the busy pursuits of life. By this, also, kuK>-ua«-e
becomes chaste, perception clear, judgment ballanced, and
imagination plumes her lofty wings for appalling flights.
Our pulpits to-day groan beneath an ignorant ministry,
and polished oratory is comparitivcly a stranger, while
professional pursuits are barren among our people. The late
revolution left us free, and the loth amendment has guar¬
anteed the right of citizenship, but we are lamentably
wanting in the sphere of professional men, a necessity too
fraught with fearful evils to any people.
Five thousand colored physicians, four or five thousand
colored lawyers, and ten thousand educated colored minis¬
ters, could find ready employment in the Southern States
to-day, and still there would be a vacuum left, besides the
great demand for politicians, public lecturers and stump ora¬
tors. I do not mean Satis eloqiicntae Sapientiae 2wiim, but
those of fecundity of thought and profundity of judg¬
ment ; and I wish it understood, I have not enumerated in
this catalogue such public men as bailiffs, constables, police¬
men and other executors of the lav;. Thus you see a field
of usefulness, rife for the harvest, almost startling, and in
the nature of things should give a double invpetus to every
colored young man in the countiy. But these do not in¬
clude all the spheres of usefulness and positions of wealth
and honor. I am anxious to see Railroad conductors on the
highways, engineers, civil and practical, giving counsel, or¬
ders ant! direction, the same as we now see among the
whites.
Another obligation we are under now not" hitherto re.
quired, of us, which demands special fitness to enable us to
discharge with credit to ourselves, and with honor to our
country, I mean to serve as Jurors. Here every faculty of
the most acute mind is brought into requisition, and the
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