And whether this rather extraordinary assertion be or be not correct, I deal with it as with the resolutions of the Anti-Slavery Committee--it is quite enough, upon such a question, and with such momentous interests at stake, that such opinions prevail in certain quarters, and that the power exists of giving them that fatal effect which these proceedings reveal, in order to force upon us, as merchants, the consideration of whether any mercantile transactions whatsoever can possibly be carried on with countries wherein the slave trade or slavery exist, with any real safety to our persons and to our property, whilst things remain as they have been shown to be in the practical development of the law. It is very true, that previous to the late elucidation of its working, there were such high legal authorities on the subject, as will be found in the pages immediately following this address; and even now, if a case is placed before the very highest counsel of the land, you will be told that _knowledge, wilful knowledge_, of the _guilty_ intent can condemn the acts upon which you are seeking advice--that that, of itself, will condemn the most indirect--and nothing short of that can condemn the most direct act of abetting the slave trade. But, in order to make good a charge, the evidence of a _probable knowledge_ is made up of those very acts which, without presupposing the knowledge, you had been told are innocent, perfectly legal, and such as you could perform. When once that case of probable knowledge is thus made out, you are called upon to meet it with a case of your own, in which you cannot allege, with any success, the innocent nature of your acts; for although those have been already declared to be innocent in themselves, they are also taken as evidence that you must be possessed of _a knowledge_ of what they were intended to be made subservient to by a foreigner at some thousands of miles distant, in a country which to you may be _terra incognita_.