That we are consumers and
non-producers--that we contribute nothing to the general progress of
man. No people who have enjoyed no greater opportunity for improvement,
could possibly have made greater progress in the same length of time
than have done the colored people of the present day.
A people laboring under many disadvantages, may not be expected to
present at once, especially before they have become entirely
untrammeled, evidence of entire equality with more highly favored
people.
When Mr. Jefferson, the great American Statesman and philosopher, was
questioned by an English gentleman, on the subject of American
greatness, and referred to their literature as an evidence of
inferiority to the more highly favored and long-existing European
nations; Mr. Jefferson's reply was--"When the United States have existed
as long as a nation, as Greece before she produced her Homer and
Socrates; Rome, before she produced her Virgil, Horace, and Cicero; and
England, before she produced her Pope, Dryden, and Bacon"; then he might
consider the comparison a just one. And all we shall ask, is not to wait
so long as this, not to wait until we become a nation at all, so far as
the United States are concerned, but only to unfetter our brethren, and
give us, the freemen, an equal chance for emulation, and we will admit
any comparison you may please to make in a quarter of a century after.
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