The Judge admits in his decision, that there are persons in that community opposed to the policy of the law in question, and who believe that universal intellectual culture is necessary to religious instruction and education, and that such culture is suitable to a state of slavery. He, however, embraces the opportunity to state that he regards such opinions as “manifestly mischievous.” Hear, oh Earth! A Judge, in the most enlightened country in the world, and in the nineteenth century, believes that the intellectual culture of human beings is a crime! He professes to hold the Bible to be the word of God, and the very bulwark of our institutions--from it he derives the right to hold a portion of human beings in bondage--in it he sees the Divine command to every human soul to “search the Scriptures,” and yet says that a certain portion of the world must not obey this command, and that it is a crime to teach them to do so! Admirable logic! Oh, most righteous Judge! His real character may be better seen revealed in a subsequent sentence, wherein he argues that there is more respect for the law and for moral and religious conduct and behavior in those sections of Virginia, where even among the whites one-fourth or more are entirely without a knowledge of letters. Why, this man’s avowed principles would do away with education of any kind for any class of people! He would see his own State, proud and haughty Virginia, return to a state of barbarism, and completely shrouded in a pall of mental darkness! This is the inevitable conclusion from his own words. Is Norfolk, that little corner of the great Commonwealth, so far behind the age as to desire a state of things so earnestly deprecated in other sections of the State? Or is this sapient Judge alone the entertainer of such sentiments? Does he not know that the people throughout the old Commonwealth have become alarmed at their rapid degradation, and are petitioning their Legislature to devise measures to stop the downward tendency to utter ignorance? Has he never seen this short but momentous sentence, originally published in the Richmond _Whig_ of April 3d, 1854, viz: “Every decade exhibits a rapid and fearful increase of this mass of ignorance. In 1840, the number of the unlettered in Virginia amounted to sixty thousand. In 1850, it exceeded eighty thousand. At this rate, it will not require many centuries to extinguish all knowledge of letters in the State.” Here is a fact that every Virginian should ponder well. There is no doubt as to the data, and less as to the result, unless something is done at once to stay this doward current. Let them study the _real cause_ of this state of things, and not attribute it to any but the right one. Is the way to remove the evil properly commenced by imprisoning a woman for teaching a few little children to read? Again I say, oh, most righteous Judge!