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When the righteous man turneth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is a little naughty and wrong, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in righteousness.
SAMUEL BUTLER
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
BERNARD SHAW
Innumerable changes in the 1880s, and above all in the 1890s, indicated that there was developing a more highly urbanized mass society than had existed even as late as the 1870s. With this increased urbanization, the establishment of a more complex system of communications and the great growth of banking and commerce, London regained its pre-eminence as the capital, not only of a kingdom and empire, but of the whole of the world’s financial system. Never the centre of a particular branch of commerce and industry to the extent that Manchester and Birmingham were, and never an industrial city in the modern sense, it tended to assume a more dominating position as the City’s financial activities assumed more and more importance in the national economy, providing the sole means by which the gap between the country’s imports and exports could be made good. The annual adverse balance of trade in commodities was at an annual average of £62-2 million in the first half of the 1870s; but this figure, itself a record, had risen to £160.6 million in the late 1890s; even though the rate at which the gap had widened had slowed somewhat in the 1880s,
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