d the elder was doomed to serve him.

Trade is so far here from being inconsistent with a gentleman, that, in
short, trade in England makes gentlemen, and has peopled this nation
with gentlemen; for after a generation or two the tradesmen's children,
or at least their grand-children, come to be as good gentlemen,
statesmen, parliament-men, privy-counsellors, judges, bishops, and
noblemen, as those of the highest birth and the most ancient families,
and nothing too high for them. Thus the late Earl of Haversham was
originally a merchant; the late Secretary Craggs was the son of a
barber; the present Lord Castlemain's father was a tradesman; the
great-grandfather of the present Duke of Bedford the same; and so of
several others. Nor do we find any defect either in the genius or
capacities of the posterity of tradesmen, arising from any remains of
mechanic blood, which it is pretended should influence them, but all the
gallantry of spirit, greatness of soul, and all the generous principles,
that can be found in any of the ancient families, whose blood is the
most untainted, as they call it, with the low mixtures of a mechanic
race, are found in these; and, as is said before, they generally go
beyond them in knowledge of the world, which is the best education.

We see the tradesmen of England, as they grow wealthy, coming every day
to the Herald's Office, to search for the coats-of-arms of their
ancestors, in order to paint them upon their coaches, and engrave them
upon their plate, embroider them upon their furniture, or carve them
upon the pediments of their new houses; and how often do we see them
trace the registers of their families up to the prime nobility, or the
most ancient gentry of the kingdom!

In this search we find them often qualified to raise new families, if
they do not descend from old; as was said of a certain tradesman of
London that if he could not find the ancient race of gentlemen from
which he came, he would begin a new race, who should be as good
gentlemen as any that went before them. They tell us a story of the old
Lord Craven, who was afterwards created Earl of Craven by King Charles
II., that, being upbraided with his being of an upstart nobility, by the
famous Aubery, Earl of Oxford, who was himself of the very ancient
family of the Veres, Earls of Oxford, the Lord Craven told him, he
(Craven) would cap pedigrees with him (Oxford) for a wager. The Earl of
Oxford laughed at the challenge, and