Once Slavery was justified by color, as now the denial of Equal Rights is justified; and the reason is as little respectable in one case as in the other. The old pretension is curiously illustrated by an incident in the inimitable Autobiography of Franklin. An Ante-revolutionary Governor of Pennsylvania remarked gayly, “that he much admired the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of _blacks_, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them”; on which a friend said, “Franklin, why do you continue to side with those damned Quakers? Had you not better sell them?” Franklin answered, “The Governor has not yet _blacked_ them enough.” The Autobiography proceeds to record, that the Governor “labored hard to _blacken_ the Assembly in all his Messages, but they wiped off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and placed it in return thick upon his own face, so that, finding he was likely to be _negrofied_ himself, he grew tired of the contest and quitted the Government.”[202] To negrofy a man was to degrade him. Thus in the ambition of Sancho Panza, and in the story of the British governor, was color the badge of Slavery. “Then I can sell them,” said Sancho Panza; and the British governor repeated the saying. This is changed now; but not entirely. At present nobody dares say, “I can sell them”; but the inn, the common conveyance, the theatre, the school, the scientific institute, the church, and the cemetery deny them the equal rights of Freedom. Color has its curiosities in history. For generations the Roman circus was convulsed by factions known from their liveries as _white_ and _red_; new factions adopted _green_ and _blue_; and these latter colors raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome of Constantinople.[203] Then came _blacks_ and _whites_, Neri and Bianchi, in the political contentions of Italy,[204] where the designation was from the accident of a name. In England the most beautiful of flowers, in two of its colors, became the badge of hostile armies, and the white rose fought against the red. But it has been reserved for our Republic, dedicated to the rights of human nature, to adopt the color of the skin as the sign of separation, and to organize it in law.