"If you intend to travel much in our country, sir, I would advise great caution in throwing out such an insinuation, for it would be apt to meet with a very general and unqualified disapprobation. Americans are enlightened and free, and as far from deserving these epithets as any people on earth."
"And yet the fact follows from your own theory. If one man is as good as another, and any one of them is a fool, or a knave, or a traitor,--all are knaves, or fools, or traitors! The insinuation is not mine, but it follows, I think, inevitably, as a consequence of your own proposition."
In the pause that succeeded, Mr. Sharp said in a low voice to Eve, "He is an Englishman, after all!"
"Mr. Dodge does not mean that one man is as good as another in that particular sense," Mr. Effingham kindly interposed, in his quality of host; "his views are less general, I fancy, than his words would give us, at first, reason to suppose."
"Very true, Mr. Effingham, very true, sir; one man is not as good as another in that particular sense, or in the sense of elections, but in all other senses. Yes, sir," turning towards Mr. Blunt again, as one reviews the attack on an antagonist, who has given a fall, after taking breath; "in all other senses, one man is unqualifiedly as good as another. One man has the same rights as another."
"The slave as the freeman?"
"The slaves are exceptions, sir. But in the free states except in the case of elections, one man is as good as another in all things. That is our meaning, and any other principle would be unqualifiedly unpopular."
"Can one man make a shoe as well as another?"
"Of rights, sir,--I stick to the rights, you will remember,"
"Has the minor the same rights as the man of full age; the apprentice as the master; the vagabond as the resident; the man who cannot pay as the man who can?"