During the year the Queen seldom appeared in public, which was, perhaps, one reason why a marked deterioration in the moral tone of society was discernible. A curious languor crept over the upper classes. They were consumed with a quenchless thirst for amusement, and the genius who could have invented a new pleasure would have had the world at his feet. Frivolity seemed to prey like a cancer on the vitality of the nation. When the Prince of Wales gave a State Fancy Ball in July, the _Times_ actually devoted three columns of space to an elaborate description of the dresses. Sport became a serious business to all classes of society, and even grave and earnest men of affairs like Mr. Gladstone wasted their lives in the laborious idleness of ecclesiastical controversies. The more vigorous youth of the aristocracy now began to make their “grand tour,” not as did their ancestors to study foreign affairs and institutions, but merely to kill big game. Fashionable life became so costly that rents had to be exacted with unusual rigour, and the strikes among the agricultural labourers that mitigated the advantages of a good harvest, were accordingly spoken of in West End drawing-rooms as if they had revived the horrors of the _Jacquerie_. Though prices had begun to fall, the mercantile classes vied with the aristocracy in the ostentatious extravagance of their personal expenditure, and in the City the old and substantial Princes of Commerce were pushed aside by gamblers who termed themselves “financial agents,” and who had suddenly grown rich by “placing” Foreign Loans and floating fabulously successful Joint-Stock Companies. The pace of life was too rapid even for the Prince of Wales, whose financial embarrassments during a dull autumn formed the subject of some discussion. It was publicly stated that he had incurred liabilities to the extent of £600,000, and that the Queen, disgusted with Mr. Gladstone’s refusal to apply to Parliament for money to discharge them, had paid them herself. From what has already been said on this delicate subject it is hardly necessary to point out here that this statement was not quite accurate. It was true that the debts of the Heir Apparent amounted to one-third of his income, but it was equally true that on the 1st of October his Controller’s audit showed that he had a balance to his credit sufficient to meet them. At the same time there could be no doubt that the Prince’s expenditure far exceeded his resources, for sums varying from £10,000 to £20,000, taken from the great fund accumulated for him by the Prince Consort’s thrifty administration of the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, were sacrificed every year to prevent his debts from becoming unmanageable.[75]