But to return:—The laws by which the government of Fashion is administered, like the common law of England, are unwritten; and derive their force, as that does, from usage and prescription. The only code of any note among this people, is that which they distinguish by the collective appellation of the LAW of HONOUR. This extraordinary code has been defined to be—“a system of rules constructed by people of Fashion, and calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another.” {29} Now if this definition be a just one, (and I presume it is, from the high authority by which it is given,) it will afford us no indifferent help, towards unfolding the mysteries of Fashionable jurisprudence. It seems, then, that the _Law of Honour_, by which people of Fashion are said to be governed, is wholly and exclusively designed to make them acceptable to each other. Now, not to mention other things, persons in a Fashionable sphere cannot be strictly agreeable to each other, unless they are well dressed; nor can that intercourse which they chiefly value, be pleasantly maintained, without splendid equipages, choice wines, and sumptuous entertainments. As, therefore, the necessity of the case requires such accommodations, the _Law of Honour_, to say the least, does not look very nicely into the means by which they may have been procured. Hence it follows, by the fairest inference, that a man of Fashion is not at all the less respectable in his own circle, merely because he is what the rest of the world calls unjust. For, whatever may be the law elsewhere, a man of Fashion can owe nothing to his inferiors: and his character will therefore suffer no stain, though he should have broken his word a thousand times with the reptile that made his clothes, built his carriage, or furnished his table. This law is also distinguished by many other features of toleration, which well account for the respect and influence that it possesses in the Fashionable World. By a spirit of accommodation, of which there is no other example, it overlooks, if it does not even encourage, a variety of actions, which in the mouth of a moralist would be absolute vices; and which, to say the truth, are scarcely deserving of a much better name. Thus, a man may debauch his tenant’s daughter, seduce the wife of his friend, and be faithless, and even brutal to his own, and yet be esteemed a man of honour, (which is the same as a man of Fashion,) and have a right to make any man fight him who says he is not. In like manner, a man may blaspheme God, and encourage his children and servants to do the same; he may neglect the interests, and squander the property, of his family; he may be a tyrant in his house, and a bully in the streets; he may lie a-bed all day, and drink and game all night; and yet be a most dutiful subject of the _Law of Honour_, and a shining character in the society of Fashion.