that they refuse to marry
tradesmen, nay, even merchants, though vastly above them in wealth and
fortune, only because they are tradesmen, or, as they are pleased to
call them, though improperly, mechanics; and though perhaps they have
not above L500 or L1000 to their portion, scorn the man for his rank,
who does but turn round, and has his choice of wives, perhaps, with two,
or three, or four thousand pounds, before their faces.

The gentlemen of quality, we see, act upon quite another foot, and, I
may say, with much more judgment, seeing nothing is more frequent than
when any noble family are loaded with titles and honour rather than
fortune, they come down into the city, and choose wives among the
merchants' and tradesmen's daughters to raise their families; and I am
mistaken, if at this time we have not several duchesses, countesses, and
ladies of rank, who are the daughters of citizens and tradesmen, as the
Duchess of Bedford, of A----e, of Wharton, and others; the Countess of
Exeter, of Onslow, and many more, too many to name, where it is thought
no dishonour at all for those persons to have matched into rich
families, though not ennobled; and we have seen many trading families
lay the foundation of nobility by their wealth and opulence--as Mr
Child, for example, afterwards Sir Josiah Child, whose posterity by his
two daughters are now Dukes of Beaufort and of Bedford, and his grandson
Lord Viscount Castlemain, and yet he himself began a tradesman, and in
circumstances very mean.

But this stiffness of the ladies, in refusing to marry tradesmen, though
it is weak in itself, is not near so weak as the folly of those who
first do stoop to marry thus, and yet think to maintain the dignity of
their birth in spite of the meanness of their fortune, and so, carrying
themselves above that station in which Providence has placed them,
disable themselves from receiving the benefit which their condition
offers them, upon any subsequent changes of their life.

This extraordinary stiffness, I have known, has brought many a
well-bred gentlewoman to misery and the utmost distress, whereas, had
they been able to have stooped to the subsequent circumstances of life,
which Providence also thought fit to make their lot, they might have
lived comfortably and plentifully all their days.

It is certainly every lady's prudence to bring her spirit down to her
condition; and if she thinks fit, or it is any how her lot to marry a
trades