The anonymity of life in large urban centers tended to remove many of the social constraints to individual behavior.
"The Black Experience in America The Immigrant Heritage of America"
Norman Coombs
When I contemplate these things; when I know that the Colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me.
"Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America"
Edmund Burke
You have complimented me on my beauty; I congratulate you upon yours, and I am surprised that you have so kept and preserved it in the midst of the constraints and servitude that grandeur and greatness involve.
"The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Volume VI. Being the Historic Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV."
Madame La Marquise De Montespan