I am going towards
Springhaven. Give me the pleasure of your company, and the benefit of
your opinion upon politics. I have heard the highest praise of your
abilities, my friend. Speak to me just as you would to one of your
brother fishermen. By the accident of birth I am placed differently from
you; and in this country that makes all the difference between a man
and a dog, in our value. Though you may be, and probably are, the better
man--more truthful, more courageous, more generous, more true-hearted,
and certain to be the more humble of the two. I have been brought up
where all men are equal, and the things I see here make a new world to
me. Very likely these are right, and all the rest of the world quite
wrong. Englishmen always are certain of that; and as I belong to the
privileged classes, my great desire is to believe it. Only I want to
know how the lower orders--the dregs, the scum, the dirt under our
feet, the slaves that do all the work and get starved for it--how these
trampled wretches regard the question. If they are happy, submissive,
contented, delighted to lick the boots of their betters, my conscience
will be clear to accept their homage, and their money for any stick
of mine they look at. But you have amazed me by a most outrageous act.
Because the lower orders have owned a path here for some centuries, you
think it wrong that they should lose their right. Explain to me, Daniel,
these extraordinary sentiments.
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