r instance, if any such writer would so
far extend the sphere of his contemplations, as to observe and exhibit
_the effects of fashionable manners and customs upon the class of
servants, and the class of tradesmen_.

Under the former head, there may be found, perhaps, little to find
fault with on the score of mere manner and outward demeanour. To use
servants with harshness, or to be wanting in that species of
consideration for them which consists in a certain mildness and
amenity of manner, would ruffle and deform that smooth surface of
things which it is agreeable to the taste of people in high life to
see around them. Nor do they, perhaps, interfere with the comfort of
their dependents, by any undue or onerous exactions of service; for
their establishments, being for the most part calculated for show, are
more numerous than is required for use, and are therefore necessarily
underworked, except, perhaps, in the case of some poor drudges at the
bottom, who slink up and down the back stairs unseen, and whose
comfort, therefore, does not engage the attention of a family of this
class; and even these will not be oppressed with their labours, unless
when some impoverished people of fashion may find it necessary to dock
the tails of their establishments in order to keep the more prominent
portions entire. Nevertheless the exceptions which may be taken
against fashionable life, as affecting the class of servants, are of a
very grave description. Late hours and habits of dissipation in the
heads of a family make it almost impossible, especially in London, to
exercise that wholesome household discipline which is requisite to
secure the well-being of a servant. Luxury and ostentation require
that the servants of these people should be numerous; their number
unavoidably makes them idle; idleness makes them debauched; debauchery
renders them often necessitous; the affluence or the prodigality, the
indolence or indulgence; or indifference of their masters, affords
them every possible facility for being dishonest; and, beginning with
the more venial kinds of peculation, their conscience has an
opportunity of making an easy descent through the various gradations
of larceny, till the misdemeanant passes into the felon. In the
meantime, the master, taking no blame to himself, nor considering that
servants are for the most part what their masters make them, that they
are the creatures, at least, of those circumstances which their
mast