“There are a great many things we are willing to do for ourselves that we are not willing to do for others. But even on that principle, which I think false and illogical, you could not be justified. A gentleman is not willing to black his own boots. It is offensive to his feelings, to his self-respect; it is something he will not do if he can get anybody else to do it for him.”
“Then, in America,” said the Altrurian, “it is not offensive to the feelings of a gentleman to let another do for him what he would not do for himself?”
“Certainly not.”
“Ah,” he returned, “then we understand something altogether different by the word gentleman in Altruria.”
Song of the Lower Classes
By Ernest Jones
(Chartist leader and poet, 1819-1869; sentenced in 1848 to two years imprisonment)
We plow and sow, we’re so very, very low,
That we delve in the dirty clay;
Till we bless the plain with the golden grain,