This brings us to another point of great moment. It will be denied by but few--and by none maintaining the natural equality of the races--that the free colored people of the United States are sufficiently enlightened, to be elevated by education, in an encouraging degree, where proper restraints from vice, and encouragements to virtue prevail. A large portion, even, of the slave population, are similarly enlightened. We speak not of the state of the morals of either class. As the public are not well informed, in relation to the extent to which the religious instruction of the slaves at the South prevails, the following information will prove interesting, and show that a good work has long been in progress, and has been producing its fruits: "The South Carolina Methodist Conference have a missionary committee devoted entirely to promoting the religious instruction of the slave population, which has been in existence twenty-six years. The Report[74] of the last year shows a greater degree of activity than is generally known. They have twenty-six missionary stations in which thirty-two missionaries are employed. The Report affirms that public opinion in South Carolina is decidedly in favor of the religious instruction of slaves, and that it has become far more general and systematic than formerly. It also claims a great degree of success to have attended the labors of the missionaries." The Report of the Missionary Board, of the Louisiana Conference, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1855, says:[75] "It is stated upon good authority, that the number of colored members in the Church South, exceeds that of the entire membership of all the Protestant missions in the world. What an enterprise is this committed to our care! The position we, of the Methodist Church South, have taken for the African, has, to a great extent, cut us off from the sympathy of the Christian Church throughout the world; and it behooves us to make good this position in the sight of God, of angels, of men, of churches, and to our own consciences, by presenting before the throne of His glory multitudes of the souls of these benighted ones abandoned to our care, as the seals of our ministry. Already Lousiana promises to be one vast plantation. Let us--we must gird ourselves for this Heaven-born enterprise of supplying the pure gospel to the slave. The great question is, How can the greatest number be preached to?--The building roadside chapels is as yet the best solution of it. In some cases planters build so as to accommodate adjoining plantations, and by this means the preacher addresses three hundred or more slaves, instead of one hundred or less. Economy of this kind is absolutely essential where the labor of the missionary is so much needed and demanded.