But the House must be aware that there was not only an African medium, but an African logic. It seemed to be an acknowledged axiom in this; that every person, who offered a slave for sale, had a right to sell him, however fraudulently he might have obtained him. This had been proved by the witnesses, who opposed him. "It would have stopped my trade," said one of them, "to have asked the broker, how he came by the person he was offering me for sale"--"We always suppose," said another, "the broker has a right to sell the person he offers us"--"I never heard of such a question being asked," said a third; "a man would be thought a fool, who should put such a question."--He hoped the House would see the practical utility of this logic. It was the key-stone, which held the building together. By means of it, slave-captains might traverse the whole coast of Africa, and see nothing but equitable practices. They could not, however, be wholly absolved, even if they availed themselves of this principle to its fullest extent; for they had often committed depredations themselves; especially when they were passing by any part of the coast, where they did not mean to continue or to go again. Hence it was (as several captains of the navy and others had declared on their examination) that the natives, when at sea in their canoes, would never come near the men of war, till they knew them to be such. But finding this, and that they were not slave-vessels, they laid aside their fears, and came and continued on board with unsuspecting cheerfulness.