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"including the rule of three". This is, indeed, equality before the law" and equality where it is most needed - in the moral and intellectual elevation of the negro. As apprentices, the child of the negro and the child of the white man stand alongside of each other in that most important matter, the element of an education.

More than this - and by it told to the honor of the late lawmakers of the Old Dominion - when the bill making these humane provisions was under consideration, it was moved to amend it by giving a less amount of instruction, and leaving the matter to the discretion of the courts, but the proposition was voted down by a very large majority, on the ground of public policy in reference to the general interests of society, and of justice to the negro. 

Thirdly, the marital relation between colored persons has been made the subject of legal regulation.

Heretofore, the marriage of colored persons was not a matter of legal arrangements. There was nothing of the solemnity of the marriage rite. Colored persons cohabited without moral or legal restraint, which was, confessedly,
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