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principles, if they are principles. You are inconsistent. You are
opposed to aristocracies, yet you'd take an earldom if you could. Am I
to understand that you don't blame an earl for being and remaining an
earl?"
"I certainly don't."
"
And you wouldn't blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for
accepting an earldom if it was offered?"
"
"
"
Indeed I wouldn't."
Well, then, who would you blame?"
The whole nation--any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any
country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a
hereditary aristocracy which they can't enter--and on absolutely free and
equal terms."
"Come, aren't you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not
differences?"
"Indeed I am not. I am entirely clear-headed about this thing. If I
could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I
should be a rascal to accept them. And if enough of the mass would join
me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do
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