THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE

versus.

COL. JUDSON’S LAW.

The Journal of Commerce of July 30 ^th has copied the statement made in the Advertiser of July 25, by Col Judson and Rufus Adams, Esq. and have made the following remarks upon it.

We publish to day an article from Canterbury which has appeared in several papers of that neighborhood. We do so, because we understand it to be a sort of official declaration of the grounds upon which the law and proceedings under it, relative to the school for colored children in that town, are to be defended. We are certainly willing it should have all proper weight. Yet we must think the ground taken will be very difficult to maintain. The opposition to the school then, is made because it is a school of immediate abolition doctrines. This is not the ground of defence which has ever before been taken. The Report to the Legislature and the Law, both set forth the injurious influx of blacks from other states as the evil to be prevented. But whether new or old, the position now assumed is one which cannot be maintained under our institutions. We have learned, and our constitutions are based upon the knowledge, that the best way to put down error is by argument, not by law. That the best way to maintain truth and sound opinions is to leave error unrestrained. Admitting therefore, that the doctrines of the abolitionists are never so erroneous, it amounts to nothing in defence of the law; for error, whether religious, political, scientific, or of whatever sort, is entitled, so far as the laws are concerned, to set up schools and colleges, and propagate itself by all peaceable means, as entirely unrestrained as if it were pure truth. Surely in Connecticut, that focus of toleration, the doctrines of this defence will find no countenance. As to the improprieties in the manner of introducing the school, and the abusive anonymous letters which were sent to the gentlemen, they are certainly not matters which full grown men should set forth in so formidable a manner. Indeed we think that such a defence as this, must be with sensible men, their last effort before abandoning the cause.