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tice [[practice]] of the courts have been, to make the amount to be paid correspond as nearly as possible to the age and condition of the child. An infant from five to ten or twelve years of age, is not regarded as capable of earning any thing toward its own maintenance; while after it has attained to its teens, its labor is usually not only remunerative but profitable. Heretofore the rule has been, to give to minors who served as apprentices from thirteen to eighteen or twenty-one, according to the sex, a larger consideration in money and clothes, than to such as were taken and maintained in their infancy. In most cases the provisions have been, two suits of clothes, or two suits of new clothes, one for every day wear and one for Sunday, and fifteen, twenty or thirty dollars, and in some cases a larger amount, to be paid to the parent during the period of the child's apprenticeship, or to the apprentice at the expiration of that period, in some cases with interest.

I have found but little unwillingness on the part of the citizens, to comply with the provisions of the Statute and the practice of the courts, so far as they pertain to the care and keeping of the apprentice, the quantity of clothes and money he is to receive during the apprenticeship or at its termination, and his instruction in some trade or employment. But they all object to entering into agreements to educate to the extent required by the statute in the case of white minors. At first I was inclined to regard this as an aversion to the education of the colored population, but I am now of the opinion, after careful inquiry and observation, that it arises in part from a settled belief that black children- the particular ones in question- are not capable of receiving the statutory amount of education under the 

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