"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."