One of the cardinal truths of religion and freedom is the _Equality and Brotherhood of Man_. In the sight of God and of all just institutions the white man can claim no precedence or exclusive privilege from his color. It is the accident of an accident that places a human soul beneath the dark shelter of an African countenance, rather than beneath our colder complexion. Nor can I conceive any application of the divine injunction, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, more pertinent than to the man who founds a discrimination between his fellow-men on difference of skin. It is well known that the prejudice of color, which is akin to the stern and selfish spirit that holds a fellow-man in slavery, is peculiar to our country. It does not exist in other civilized countries. In France colored youths at college have gained the highest honors, and been welcomed as if they were white. At the Law School there I have sat with them on the same benches. In Italy I have seen an Abyssinian mingling with monks, and there was no apparent suspicion on either side of anything open to question. All this was Christian: so it seemed to me. In lecturing before a Lyceum which has introduced the prejudice of color among its laws, and thus formally reversed an injunction of highest morals and politics, I might seem to sanction what is most alien to my soul, and join in disobedience to that command which teaches that the children of earth are all of one blood. I cannot do this. I beg, therefore, to be excused at present from appointing a day to lecture before your Lyceum; and I pray you to lay this letter before the Lyceum, that the ground may be understood on which I deem it my duty to decline the honor of appearing before them. I hope you will pardon the frankness of this communication, and believe me, my dear Sir, Very faithfully yours, CHARLES SUMNER. _To the Chairman of the Committee } of the New Bedford Lyceum._ } PRISONS AND PRISON DISCIPLINE.[120] ARTICLE FROM THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER, JANUARY, 1846. It is with a feeling of deference that we welcome Miss Dix's "Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline." Her peculiar labors for humanity, and her renunciation of the refined repose which has such attractions for her sex, to go about doing good, enduring the hardships of travel, the vicissitudes of the changing season, and, more trying still, the coldness of the world, awaken towards her a sense of gratitude, and invest her name with an interest which must attach to anything from her pen. [120] 1. _Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States._ By D.L. DIX. Second Edition. Philadelphia. 1845. 8vo. pp. 108.