"
"Yes. Well?"
"Then the people that bought them could not have a right, any
more," I said.
"But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "do you know that there are
different opinions on this very point?"
I was silent. It made no difference to me.
"Suppose for the moment that the first people, as you say, had
no precise right to sell the men and women they brought to
this country; yet those who bought them and paid honest money
for them, and possessed them from generation to generation, —
had not they a _right_ to pass them off upon other hands,
receiving their money back again?"
"I don't know how to explain it," I said. "I mean — if at
first — Dr. Sandford, hadn't the people that were sold, hadn't
they rights too?"
"Rights of what sort?"
"A right to do what they liked with themselves, and to earn
money, and to keep their wives?"
"But those rights were lost, you know, Daisy."
"But _could_ they be?" I said. "I mean — Dr. Sandford, for
instance, suppose somebody stole your watch from you; would
you lose the right to it?"
"It _seems_ to me that I should not, Daisy.
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