Fashion

.—Whatever custom prevails amongst the great, whatever mode of dress, particular idiom of expression, or cant word, is by them employed, we style Fashion; and, in general, no matter how contemptible, mischievous, or unnatural, we are eager to adopt and practise the absurdity.

This we perceive, what a vast influence Fashion must necessarily have over the morals of society, and how much its welfare consequently depends on the example of the superior orders. It is therefore to be lamented, that those to whom we look up as our betters, should so seldom set up Virtue as a fashion; but that, instead thereof, they should only afford us an example of the most extravagant follies, of the rankest debaucheries. If a Prince of Wales should delight in the most violent excesses of the table, it is then the fashion to be eternally drunk; if he should, on every occasion, display symptoms of heedless and unbounded prodigality, it is then the ton to fix no limits to our expences; or if he should take it in his head to talk nonsense, it then becomes quite the fashion to do like the Prince, and talk like a fool. Hence the contagion immediately pervades every department of the community, from his Royal Highness’s Lord in waiting, down to the lowest journeyman shopkeeper.

In like manner if a Duke of York, anxious to make a splendid parade of his great military talents, should cry out for war, the whole British noblesse re-echo the sound, and the nation breathes the same warlike spirit, till after two or three unfortunate campaigns, the treasury drained, commerce decayed, manufactures annihilated, the mass of the people reduced to beggary, they begin to deplore their madness, and to invoke the blessings of pace. Now then is arrived the season of reflection; now is the time for Britons to deliberate on the policy or impolicy of implicitly submitting to the doctrines, or blindly adopting the principles, of the Great. Now is the time for them most seriously to consider whether society owes any obligation to their virtues, whether it ought to entertain any rational hope of improvement, or happiness, either from their exertions or sacrifices; and finally, it becomes necessary now to determine, how far it will be wise or prudent, any longer to abide by those Fashions, which, for so many ages, have been imposed on the world.