The common school is important to all; but to the colored child it is a necessity. Excluded from the common school, he finds himself too frequently without any substitute. But even where a separate school is planted, it is inferior in character, buildings, furniture, books, teachers: all are second-rate. No matter what the temporary disposition, the separate school will not flourish as the common school. It is but an offshoot or sucker, without the strength of the parent stem. That the two must differ is seen at once; and that this difference is adverse to the colored child is equally apparent. For him there is no assurance of education except in the common school, where he will be under the safeguard of all. White parents will take care not only that the common school is not neglected, but that its teachers and means of instruction are the best possible; and the colored child will have the benefit of this watchfulness. This decisive consideration completes the irresistible argument for the common school as the equal parent of all without distinction of color. If to him that hath is given, according to the way of the world, it is not doubted that to him that hath not there is a positive duty in proportion to the necessity. Unhappily, our colored fellow-citizens are in this condition. But just in proportion as they are weak, and not yet recovered from the degradation in which they have been plunged, does the Republic owe its completest support and protection. Already a component part of our political corporation, they must become part of the educational corporation also, with Equality as the supreme law. OTHER PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. It is with humiliation that I am forced to insist upon the same equality in other public institutions of learning and science,--also in churches, and in the last resting-places of the dead. So far as any of these are public in character and organized by law, they must follow the general requirement. How strange that any institution of learning or science, any church, or any cemetery should set up a discrimination so utterly inconsistent with correct principle! But I do not forget that only recently a colored officer of the National Army was treated with indignity at the communion-table. To insult the dead is easier, although condemned by Christian precept and heathen example. As in birth, so in death are all alike,--beginning with the same nakedness, and ending in the same decay; nor do worms spare the white body more than the black. This equal lot has been the frequent occasion of sentiment and of poetry. Horace has pictured pallid Death with impartial foot knocking at the cottages of the poor and the towers of kings.[198] In the same spirit the early English poet, author of “Piers Ploughman,” shows the lowly and the great in their common house:-- “For in charnel at chirche Cherles ben yvel to knowe, Or a knyght from a knave there.”[199] And Chaucer even denies the distinction in life:--