This is the first of several picture posts featuring quotations and or pictures.
The subject here is the evolution of religious zeal.
”freedom to choose! ”
Whatever objections may exist in more advanced societies, to the principle of compulsory education they can have no place or reference to a colony in which the great mass of the people have just emerged from slavery. But have not yet generally acquired any acquaintance with the principles and precepts of Christianity and are, for the most part destitute of the first elements of learning. In such case it would be a substitution of the name, for the substance of liberty, if we should hold ourselves bound to acknowledge and respect amongst the Negroes the freedom to choose between knowledge and ignorance.[1]
Dispatch to the Governor of Jamaica
(15 October 1835)
Secretary of State for the Colonies
Journals of the Jamaica Council
Jamaica Archives, IB/5/4/25,
... twenty-first century