In the circles of fashion the same cry is frequent. A new man appears in society. "Who is he?" "Only So-and-so!" He is a retired grocer, or as Cobbett called Sadler, "a linen-draper;" and the exclusive class immediately club together for the purpose of "Keeping him out." He is "cut." Even the new man of high-sounding title is accounted as nothing among the old families who boast of their "blue blood." Wealth goes a great way, but still that does not compensate for the accident of birth and connections among these classes.
Every class has its own standard. The money classes have theirs too. Even tradesmen and their wives go in sets, and there is always some class outside their own set, which they contrive to "keep out." The aristocratic contagion thus extends from the highest to the verge of the lowest class of society in England. Is not monopoly the rule among us, whenever we can find an opportunity of establishing it? Monopoly or exclusivism in art, in theology, in trade, in literature, in sociology. Look at the forty Royal Academicians setting their backs up against every new-comer in art, and combining with one accord to "Keep him out." That is the monopoly of art; and people at large call it a humbug; but they are not more tolerant or wise when their own craft comes to be dealt with. Each in his turn is found ready to combine with somebody else, to "keep out" all intruders on their special preserves. The "Flaming Tinman," in Lavengro, pummels and puts to flight the poor tinker who intrudes upon his beat; the costers combine to keep out freshmen from theirs; English navvies band together to drive Irish navvies off their contracts; and Irish tenants pick off, from behind a hedge, the intruders upon their holdings. Even the searchers of the sewers maintain a kind of monopoly of their unholy calling, and will recognize no man as a brother who has not been duly initiated in the mysteries of the search. The sewer-searcher is as exclusive in his way as the leader of fashion at Almacks. "Keep him out!" is, in short, the watchword of all classes, of all ranks, of all callings, of all crafts, of all interests. We used to "keep out" the foreign corn-grower, but though he may now come in, there is exclusiveness and monopoly in ten thousand other forms, which no legislation can ever touch.