Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/329

CHAPTER XXIII

Circa 1785—1802

THE "QUALITY"

"Opinions, like fashions, descend from those of quality down to the vulgar, where they are dropped and vanish."—Swift.

THE growing wealth of the commercial classes affected all ranks of society, and none more than the proud old aristocracy of England, the "quality" as they were called in the eighteenth century. Although George III. had decreed that "no individual engaged in trade, however ample might be his nominal fortune," should be created a British peer; although they were the natural heads of landed interest in England, the "centre of a traditional popular reverence unmistakable in its … sincerity," the acknowledged leaders of public life, inasmuch as they entirely constituted the House of Lords, and by their borough

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