"Certainly; that is just what I mean."
"But look at America—the happiest, richest, most orderly and yet the most populous country in the world."
"I speak of Republicanism in England, not in America."
"But where is the difference?" persisted Geoffrey. "If the universal suffrage of the people be virtue in America, how can it be vice in England?"
"As the food of one life may be the poison of another," answered Dacre. "Human society has many forms, and all may be good, but each must be specially protected by its own public morality. England was reared into greatness and flourished in greatness for twenty hundred years on one unvarying order. America has developed under another order, a different but not a better one."
"That may be, but in less than two hundred years America has reached a point of wealth, order and peace that England has never approached in two thousand."
"America," continued Dacre, "had nothing to unlearn. Her people had no royal traditions—we have no democratic ones."
"There is something in that," said Geoffrey.
"There is everything in it. The Americans are true to their past, while we are false to ours. We are trampling on the glorious name and fame of our country. We are recreant to our position, intelligence, to our fathers' memories—or we shall be if we do not—"
"Do not what?" asked Geoffrey, as Dacre paused.