The warmth and eagerness with which they maintained and
promulgated their opinions might have tempted, however, an impartial
person to suspect that they secretly entertained some doubts of their
truth and soundness.
On the other hand, the other party maintained that Fashion was a
positive quality; that the moment a person obtained a certain degree of
refinement he or she became, in fact and essentially, fashionable; that
the views of the old class were unphilosophical and illiberal, and
unworthy of an enlightened age; that men were equal, and that everything
is open to everybody; and that when we take into consideration the
nature of man, the origin of society, and a few other things, and duly
consider the constant inclination and progression towards perfection
which mankind evince, there was no reason why, in the course of time,
the whole nation should not go to Almack's on the same night.
At this moment of doubt and dispute the Government of Vraibleusia, with
that spirit of conciliation and liberality and that perfect wisdom for
which it had been long celebrated, caring very little for the old class,
whose interest, it well knew, was to support it, and being exceedingly
desirous of engaging the affections of the new race, declared in their
favour; and acting upon that sublime scale of measures for which this
great nation has always been so famous, the Statue issued an edict that
a new literature should be invented, in order at once to complete the
education of the Millionaires and the triumph of the Romantic over the
Classic School of Manners.
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