erce were enormously
increased by the use of mechanical inventions, and the productive power
of the soil by improvements in agriculture. The conditions of industry
changed and, as must ever be the case, industrial revolution brought
suffering on the poor.

The highest class still formed a small and close society; there was no
doubt as to who belonged to it and no chance for an outsider to push his
way into it. The members of it were so thoroughly acquainted with one
another's doings that invitations to dinner were often given only two
days beforehand, and with even shorter notice. They had enormous
authority, both political and social. Entirely independent of public
opinion, those of them who loved vice or frivolity indulged their tastes
without shame or measure. Gambling, the fashionable folly, was carried
to an extraordinary height, especially between 1772 and 1776. At
Brooks's the stakes at quinze were not less than L50, and there was
often L10,000 on the table. Gamesters exchanged their rich clothes for
frieze coats, covered their lace ruffles with leather cuffs, and
shielded their eyes by high-crowned hats with broad brims. Fox
squandered L140,000, chiefly at play, by the time he was twenty-five,
and his brother Stephen lost L20,000 at a sitting. Among the older
gamesters were Lord Masham, too poor for such folly, the wicked Lowther,
witty George Selwyn, and his associate, Lord March, afterwards Duke of
Queensberry, Fox's instructor in vice, the "old Q." who in the next
century as he sat in his favourite place above the porch of his house in
Piccadilly presented to the passers-by the embodiment of the iniquities
of an older generation. Ladies were not less given to play than men.
Duchesses at Bath, the "paradise of doctors and gamesters," set an
example which the vice-regal court at Dublin professed to imitate by
spending whole nights at unlimited half-guinea loo.

There was no redeeming side to this gambling; it was a sordid struggle
for money. At Brooks's in 1781 Fox, in partnership with some allies,
kept the bank at faro as a regular business, one partner relieving
another, and play going on continuously night and day. As the dealer and
the partners could be seen at work through the open windows of the club,
one can scarcely wonder that Fox's faro-bank was a sore point with the
opposition. He won largely, then lost, and finally was L30,000 "worse
than nothing". Idlers in St. James's street were amused by watchi