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¬as you have just seen, we have barbers also ; but which is the gentleman and which is the barber when you meet them in the streets, it has been long" impossible for the nicest eye to discover, as our highest nobility and our lowest tradesmen dress exactly like one another : there is perhaps something now and then in air and manner, by which people fancy they may be distinguished, but in no other way whatsoever. — I expressed great surprise at this, and said that in my country such a system w r ould be most unpopular; not from any pride in the higher orders, as the principles of equality, where they could practi- cally or usefully exist, were liberally cherished in England, but because the lower classes, who might seem to be exalted, would, with one voice, exclaim against it, as injurious to trade, as de- structive to manufactures, and a cruel oppression of the immense multitudes who only lived by hourly changing fashions, which circulate super- fluities amongst the industrious poor; and though sumptuary laws were inconsistent with our free government, yet an English nobleman would ¬be ¬
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