"If Cheliax does abolish slavery will you be open to providing them with more assistance?"

"Of course. Even with slavery - the volunteers are at their door every day. They're turning them away for their own reasons."

"Cotonnet's principled conviction that the fate of the Chelish people ought to be decided by the Chelish people, I think."

"...the man himself is no more Chelish than I am."

"I think he would much rather have a local run the Convention, but there's no one who could. Whereas filling it with Andorens would be - stacking the deck."

"My own take is that you've got to stack the deck. You've got to do it honorably, you've got to be thoughtful about it, but the point isn't to demonstrate Republicanism can win a fair fight, it's to have free people who know they're free and are pursuing their vision of the Good. I wouldn't've let foreigners in as delegates, or not more than a few of them, but I'd have strongly encouraged them to join on as staff and advisors to the delegates, to draft proposals and write pamphlets..."

"You don't think there's been a bit too much encouragement of pamphlets?"

"The pamphlets aren't the problem. The problem is that Valia Wain was the first person to tell the people of Cheliax what it looks like to be Good, and she was wrong about it, and everyone else was themselves too wrong about it to answer her, or too scrupulous, or too busy."