The decision admits that the enactment under which I suffered was not to be found in the original code of Virginia, but the result of the experience and wisdom of the later inhabitants of that State. Certainly, the framers of the original laws of the old Commonwealth were men of too much sense and foresight, too Christian, too civilized, too human, to incorporate such a disgraceful law into their rules of government. That task was left to their degenerate sons of the present decade, and even then it could not be accomplished until eighty thousand of them had returned into that mental obscurity that characterized the dark ages. The law, on its very face, indicates that it was not the offspring of men of intelligence or common prudence. Any law declaring that any portion of human beings shall be denied the benefits of education, must spring from ignorance and error, and must inevitably lead to the same results universally. The defender of such a law voluntarily classes himself with those who made it, and those against whom it especially operates. Such a man is the Honorable Richard H. Baker. The next paragraph of this venerable decision is so strangely constructed that I hardly know what to say of it. The Judge literally foams at the mouth and presents sad symptoms of hydrophobia. The expressions “Northern incendiaries,” “anti-slavery fury,” “inflammatory documents,” “cut-throats,” “Northern fanatics,” “anti-slavery nonsense,” &c., make up the entire paragraph. His Honor grows pale over a poor little inoffensive piece of muslin, with a picture upon it which he denominates “frightful.” He succeeds in working himself into a perfect fury, and about what? With nothing that I can see with which I, or the question before him, had anything to do. _I_ was not a Northern incendiary or fanatic, nor did I distribute any inflammatory documents or anti-slavery nonsense. I was a Southern woman, in every sense of the word, and he knew it. I used no books, except the Bible, or those which illustrated it, and he knew this also. The only escape for his honor is that he denounces the Bible as an inflammatory or incendiary document, and as such must not be taught to the slaves.