On the contrary, there is no medium of complacent communication between the classes of higher condition and endowment, and an ignorant, coarse populace. Except on occasion of giving orders or magisterial rebukes, the gentleman will never think of such a thing as converse with the clowns in his vicinity. They, on their part, are desirous to avoid him; excepting when any of them may have a purpose to gain, by arresting his attention, with an ungainly cringe; or when some of those who have no sort of present dependence on him, are disposed to cross his way with a look and strut of rudeness, to show how little they care for him. The servility, and the impudence, almost equally repress in him all friendly disposition toward a voluntary intercourse with the class. There is thus as complete a dissociation between the two orders, as mutual dislike, added to every imaginable dissimilarity, can create. And this broad ungracious separation intercepts all modifying influence that might otherwise have passed, from the intelligence and refinement of the one, upon the barbarism of the other. But there is in human nature a pertinacious disposition to work disadvantages, in one way or other, into privileges. The people, in being thus consigned to a low and alien ground, in relation to the cultivated part of society, are put in possession, as it were, of a territory of their own; where they can give their disposition freer play, and act out their characters in their own manner; exempt equally from the voluntary and the involuntary influence of the cultivated superiors; that is to say, neither insensibly modified by the attraction of what is the most laudable in them as a pattern, nor swayed through policy to a studied accommodation to their understood opinion and will. This is a great emancipation enjoyed by the inferiors. And however injurious it may be, it is one of which they will not fail to take the full license. For in all things and situations, it is one of the first objects with human beings, to verify experimentally the presumed extent of their liberty and privilege. In this dissociation, the people are rid of the many salutary restraints and incitements which they would have been made to feel, if on terms of friendly recognition with the respectable part of the community; they have neither honor nor disgrace, from that quarter, to take into their account; and this contributes to extinguish all sense and care of respectability of character,--a care to which there will be no motive in any consideration of what they may, as among themselves, think of one another; for, with the low estimate which they mutually and justly entertain, there is a conventional feeling among them that, for the ease and privilege of them all, they are systematically to set aside all high notions and nice responsibilities of character and conduct. There is a sort of recognized mutual _right_ to be no better than they are. And an individual among them