Gambling, cockfighting, and
bullfighting were the amusements of the people. Political life, which,
if it had been pure and vigorous, might have made up for the absence of
spiritual influences, was corrupt from the top of the scale to the
bottom: its effect on national character is pourtrayed in Hogarth's
_Election_. That property had its duties as well as its rights, nobody
had yet ventured to say or think. The duty of a gentleman towards his
own class was to pay his debts of honour and to fight a duel whenever
he was challenged by one of his own order; towards the lower class his
duty was none. Though the forms of government were elective, and
Cowper gives us a description of the candidate at election time
obsequiously soliciting votes, society was intensely aristocratic, and
each rank was divided from that below it by a sharp line which
precluded brotherhood or sympathy. Says the Duchess of Buckingham to
Lady Huntingdon, who had asked her to come and hear Whitefield, "I
thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist
preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured
with disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to
level all ranks and do away with all distinctions.
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