not alone the principal, but a handsome percentage upon the money invested in their purchase? Thus purchasers were indemnified--abundantly indemnified, against loss. The indemnity, however, should have been sought from the seller, not from the article or person sold. But, at best, purchasers of stolen goods, to entitle themselves to any indemnity, should at least be innocent; for if they buy such goods, _knowing them to be stolen_, they are guilty of a serious misdemeanor, which is everywhere punishable under the law. 'He who asks equity must do equity.' When, therefore, you of the South would realize the benefit of the concession of theologians and moralists--the benefit of justice--you should bring yourselves within the conditions they require; you should come into court with clean hands, and with the intention of acting in good faith. Have you done so? Did your fathers do so before you? Not at all. They were not ignorant purchasers of the poor, ravished African; they knew full well that he had been stolen and brought by violence from his distant home: consequently, they were guilty of a misdemeanor in purchasing; consequently, too, they come not within the case proposed by the theologians and moralists, which might entitle them to indemnity; nor were they in a condition to ask it. The present generation, claiming through them, find themselves in the same predicament, with the same title only, and the same unclean hands, perpetuating their foul oppression. None of them, as I have shown, had a right to claim indemnity by reason of having invested their money in that way; and, if they ever had such right, they have been richly indemnified already. Therefore, it is absurd for you to continue the slave business upon this plea. Having thus answered your only objections to my position, I might remind you of your determination, and call upon you to 'liberate your slaves,' and take sides with me in opposition to the cruel institution. You are greatly mistaken in supposing that my omission to propose a plan, by which slave-holders could _conveniently, and without pecuniary loss_, emancipate their slaves, constitutes the slightest objection to the argument I have advanced. If you defer their emancipation until such a plan is proposed; if you are unwilling to incur even a little sacrifice, what nobility will there be in the act, to entitle you to the consideration of the just and good, or to the approval of your own consciences? I sought by this discussion, to convince you that slavery is an enormous evil; the proposition was declared in all its boldness. You volunteered a pledge to release your slaves if I could sustain it, let the sacrifice be what it might. Some sacrifice, then, you must have anticipated; and, should your conviction now demand it, you have no cause to complain of me. Your pledge was altogether voluntary; I did not even ask it; nor did I design to suggest any such plan of universal emancipation as would suit the _convenience_