“_Resolved_, That in order to constitute the first conference of colored members, the rule of the Discipline requiring a probation of two years be so far suspended as to allow the bishops to organize into one or more annual conferences such colored local elders as have traveled two or more years under a presiding elder and shall be recommended by a quarterly conference and by at least ten elders who are members of an annual conference.” This was a wise and prudential action. Wise in that it at once dissipated any thought that might have arisen in the minds of the less stable members, that the matter was simply put in a complicated shape to keep the colored members at bay, and thereby eventually drive out of the Methodist Episcopal Church all the colored people. To have kept them waiting under the probationary rule would probably have done much harm. Prudential in that even the local elders were to come up well recommended: (1) By their own people, among whom they lived and worked, and who therefore could testify as to their moral, religious, and literary fitness for the traveling connection. (2) To be recommended “by at least ten elders (white) who are members of an annual conference.” Who were better qualified than such elders to know who were and who were not qualified for traveling preachers—our own people had no experience in matters of that kind—in that they would naturally be able and more willing to speak against those “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who sometimes “climb up some other way” into our annual conferences for the purpose of fleecing, instead of feeding, the flock of God? Our own people might have been in some way related to the applicants or ignorant of their devices. Why should not some precautions be observed when clothing with authority those who, even then, must have been witnessing “the pains, the groans, the dying strife” of an institution that had grown gray in crime and debauchery—under which for two hundred and forty-four years the race had suffered in more ways than the Hebrews in Egypt? They had never enjoyed even the privilege of elementary training in any way fitting them for happiness and usefulness in the world. They were poor and ignorant. Poor in that even the good name of the race was gone; and who does not know that a “Good name, in man and woman,... Is the immediate jewel of their souls? Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.”