consenting to keep his unearned titles, property, and privileges--at the

expense of other people; shame for consenting to remain, on any terms, in

dishonourable possession of these things, which represented bygone

robberies and wrongs inflicted upon the general people of the nation.

He said, "if there were a laid or the son of a lord here, I would like to

reason with him, and try to show him how unfair and how selfish his

position is. I would try to persuade him to relinquish it, take his

place among men on equal terms, earn the bread he eats, and hold of

slight value all deference paid him because of artificial position, all

reverence not the just due of his own personal merits."

Tracy seemed to be listening to utterances of his own made in talks with

his radical friends in England. It was as if some eavesdropping

phonograph had treasured up his words and brought them across the

Atlantic to accuse him with them in the hour of his defection and

retreat. Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on

Tracy's conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that

he was all conscience and one blister. This man's deep compassion for

the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the

contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights

whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often

uttered himself. The pity in this man's voice and words was the very

twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his

own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples.

The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence. It was a

149

The American Claimant