Antiques.

 
... where there is no Law, there is no Freedom. 
John Locke, The Two Treatises of Government ..., 1689-1690 

In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, William Blackstone called the English in the middle of the eighteenth century "a polite and commercial people." This conjures up familiar features of Georgian society--its secular outlook, its faith in a measured code of manners, its elegance, aristocratic fashions, and grand country houses. The fine landscapes and buildings in the background of paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, and the elegant clothes and furniture depicted were all real enough. However, the savage pictures of William Hogarth and the brutal caricatures of Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray reveal a side of Georgian life that is far closer to the historical record.

The most obvious and least recognized aspect of English life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is aggression. No nation rioted more easily or more savagely over economic, political, or religious grievances, real and imagined. In London, the largest city in Europe in Georgian times, slanging matches easily ...