And so they, too, are thrown back upon
themselves; upon their beer, their gin, and their _fun_. Now, then, you
will understand what I meant by saying that our inequality materializes
our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower.
And the greater the inequality the more marked is its bad action upon
the middle and lower classes. In Scotland the landed aristocracy fills
the scene, as is well known, still more than in England; the other
classes are more squeezed back and effaced. And the social civilization
of the lower middle class and of the poorest class, in Scotland, is an
example of the consequences. Compared with the same class even in
England, the Scottish lower middle class is most visibly, to vary Mr.
Charles Sumner's phrase, _less_ well-bred, _less_ careful in personal
habits and in social conventions, _less_ refined. Let any one who doubts
it go, after issuing from the aristocratic solitudes which possess Loch
Lomond, let him go and observe the shopkeepers and the middle class in
Dumbarton, and Greenock, and Gourock, and the places along the mouth of
the Clyde.
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