REGULATIONS OF COMMITTEE MUST BE REASONABLE.
Still further,—and here I approach a more technical view of the subject,—it is an admitted principle, that the regulations and by-laws of municipal corporations must be reasonable, or they are inoperative and void. This has been recognized by the Supreme Court in two different cases,—Commonwealth v. Worcester, (3 Pick. R., 462,) and in Vandine's case (6 Pick. R., 187). In another case, City of Boston v. Shaw, (1 Met. R., 130,) it was decided that a by-law of Boston, prescribing a particular form of contribution toward the expenses of making the common sewers, was void for inequality and unreasonableness.
Assuming that this principle is applicable to the School Committee, their regulations and by-laws must be reasonable. Their discretion must be exercised in a reasonable manner. And this is not what the Committee or any other body of men think reasonable, but what is reasonable in the eye of the Law. It must be legally reasonable. It must be approved by the reason of the Law.
Here we are brought once more, in another form, to the question of the discrimination on account of color. Is this legally reasonable? Is it reasonable, in the exercise of a just discretion, to separate descendants of the African race from white children merely in consequence of descent? Passing over those principles of the Constitution and those provisions of Law which of themselves decide the question, constituting as they do the highest reason, but which have been already amply considered, look for a moment at the educational system of Massachusetts, and it will be seen that practically no discrimination of color is made by Law in any part of it. A descendant of the African race may be Governor of the Commonwealth, and as such, with the advice and consent of the Council, may select the Board of Education. As Lieutenant-Governor, he may be ex officio a member of the Board. He may be Secretary of the Board, with the duty imposed on him by law of seeing "that all children in this Commonwealth, who depend upon Common Schools for instruction, may have the best education which those schools can be made to impart."[39] He may be member of any School Committee, or teacher in any Common School of the State. As legal voter, he can vote in the selection of any School Committee.
Thus, in every department connected with our Common Schools, throughout the whole hierarchy of their government, from the very head of the system down to the humblest usher in the humblest Primary School, and to the humblest voter, there is no distinction of color known to the law. It is when we reach the last stage of all, the children themselves, that the beautiful character of the system is changed to the deformity of Caste, as, in the picture of the ancient poet, what above was a lovely woman terminated below in a vile, unsightly fish. And all this is done by the School Committee, with more than necromantic power, in the exercise of a mere discretion.
It is clear that the Committee may classify scholars according to age and sex, for the obvious reasons that these distinctions are inoffensive, and that they are especially recognized as legal in the law relating to schools.[40] They may also classify scholars according to moral and intellectual qualifications, because such a power is necessary to the government of schools. But the Committee cannot assume, a priori, and without individual examination, that all of an entire race are so deficient in proper moral and intellectual qualifications as to justify their universal degradation to a class by themselves. Such an exercise of discretion must be unreasonable, and therefore illegal.