"I don't believe it is obligatory for the chair to put everything a committee member says to a vote."

"For."

Perhaps it's not obligatory, but for these members this chair will.

"Against. You cannot possibly expect men to divine that the law has changed before anyone has managed to tell them, and to punish them for breaking a new law that nobody told them was law is - Asmodean. We are past that way, now." Not that he'd vote for it if they proposed a suitable change, but they won't, so there's no need to mention that fact.

"Against." More pointed looks at the note-takers. See how all the horrible slips are voting to kill perfectly normal people? This is what happens when you let them try to outlaw slavery!

"Against. I would prefer this particular proposal be defeated in a vote, rather than simply ignored."

"Against."

Amadeu stands up violently. 

To the slips and the strix: "Fuck you." 

To the other pro-slavery guys: "And fuck you for playing along with this farce." 

And he turns on his heel and stomps out of the room. 

Jaume dutifully records this event in the minutes.

Four to four, now, on the matter of 'Kill all slaveholders,' and that only with the abolitionist chair switching sides. That proposal would fail in the wider convention, of course, he's not worried about it, but it's not a good sign for the possibility of negotiating any reasonable compromise proposal to bring to the convention.

Well, they already weren't going to get anything reasonable past the committee, but now they especially aren't getting anything reasonable past the committee.

"Evil fucking bastards. Not enough for you to steal all our stuff, you want the Crown to let you murder innocent people? Good fucking luck. —Fiducia, put in the report that I think the slips are murderous thieves and it should never have been legal to free them."

He storms out. 

Yeah. It can go in the report.

Fuck.

Liushna turns to Daniel. 

"Can explain why think bad idea?"

"So. There's a lot of people here who want revenge, for many terrible things that were done to them. But we're not going to get anywhere if we kill everyone we don't like. That's how you get a cycle of violence, like what happened in Galt. There's also basically no chance it will pass the floor."

None of this is going to pass the floor. The floor was not selected for being personally interested in questions related to slavery, a selection process which obviously produced ludicrous results. Jaume would write it all down accurately anyway but not even a less Lawful man would be all that tempted to try to interfere before it hits the floor when the floor will so obviously annihilate it.

Liushna drums her fingers on the table. 

"But," she says slowly, "is not about don't like, is about bad person keep being bad, dangerous to everyone." 

"Killing someone does stop them from doing bad things, by virtue of them being dead. But arresting them without killing them also achieves this, and is certainly less evil. I'm also not sure if specific punishments for crimes should go in the constitution at all." And he's pretty sure that, for the halflings, it is about "not liking" slavers.

"If we don't have severe enough punishments to make the slavers stop slaving, they will fine themselves one copper for every slave and keep doing it."

Oh boy this is not going to make her look good, but, "Explain arresting?"

"An arrest is when someone is, by official personages, prevented from moving and acting freely, pending longer-term arrangements that will typically depend on whether they are found guilty of a crime. If the Queen's guards came into the convention hall, pointed someone out, and said that they were suspected of a crime such as fraud or murder, that person would be arrested - prevented from going anywhere other than with the Queen's guards."

"...Okay. Hear word, 'arrest,' in Pezzack, before revolution, but seemed mostly another word for killing."

"Under calmer circumstances there is a part between the arrest and the execution for double-checking if the person has done something which carries that penalty."

"Okay. So think 'arrest' good enough?" she asks Daniel. "And more likely pass?"

"I had imagined the illegality of owning slaves would imply arrest, but Delegate Permira is right that we haven't explicitly qualified it. I'm willing to vote in favor of 'the penalty for illegally keeping a slave must include arrest'. I think it's more likely to pass the floor than the death penalty," any positive number is greater than zero "but I can't say by how much."

"Arresting someone and then letting him go is arresting him," Permira wishes to point out again.