It is therefore declared by many of both races within the Church, that _justice to the race demands it as it could not for any other class of members within the Church_. Nothing less than injustice can withhold that which is justly due. Now the colored members, whose influence has brought them forth into prominence in the Church, have never asked the General Conference to elect a bishop of African descent because our bishops have been one thing to white members and another to colored members, nor because our bishops, when coming among the colored members, have been “overseers” instead of superintendents, nor because they are not acceptable to the colored membership. Far from it. Our bishops to-day hold a place in the hearts of the colored membership of the Church that any man of African descent, elected to the episcopacy in our Church, could only desire, since he could not dislodge his white colleague. But it is asked for the same reason the Church gave years ago for the proper recognition of colored ministers when it said, it is “a principle patent to Christian enterprise that the missionary field itself must produce the most efficient missionaries.” Is not this an argument at once logically true in the case of a bishop of African descent? The reasons given by representatives from the South when asking for a separate conference were: (1) “It will secure greater efficiency in the prosecution of the work, since many things of great interest to an annual conference and to the Church never get farther than the humblest hearthstone.” (2) “It will relieve us from the taunts and sneers of designing men,” and secure the communion and friendship of many who would not otherwise unite with us. (3) “It will relieve the Church of even a suspicion of a spirit of caste, and make us feel as men, and the peers of our white brethren. (4) It will be no innovation upon any principle of Christianity or of our beloved Church,” but will mightily help in “rending the veil” and breaking down the middle wall of partition Satan has built between brethren out of the remains of slavery that existed in this country. Another reason is offered on the score of the numerical standing of the colored membership. According to the statistics of 1884, there are now not far from 1,800,000 members within the Church. Of this number, there are about 300,000 colored members. “The constitutional rights of the colored members” being recognized, indeed all their rights and privileges, it would follow that, on general principles, one member in the Church has as many and varied rights as another. The colored members in the Church make up one-sixth of its membership. They would on this scale, therefore, be entitled to one representative on our bench of bishops for every six, and so on.