ABSTRACT
The middle classes, rapidly expanding, belonged to a different and far more restricted world. The middle classes, though a heterogeneous race, unequal in wealth and prospects, in manners, morals, education, and religious feeling, had on the whole those characteristics which at once consolidated and overwhelmed a later England. The Bank of England exemplified middle-class power at its strongest; but at lower levels the small tradesman and the small manufacturer were conscious of their liberties, alive to their opportunities, emancipated from feudal fears and patrician threats. London was perhaps a middle-class world run on middle-class standards. Shopkeepers' sons, had more and more at their disposal the London day schools, where tuition was cheap, or such famous free schools as Westminster, the Merchant Taylors, Greyfriars, Christ's Hospital, and Paul's. Uneasy as capitalists and unwilling to be workers, the great shopkeeping population of London became a hardy vision-less race, with a hatred of being cockneys and a fear of being gentlemen.
