As for the traditions – we always change them whenever there's a selfish end to be pursued

From Death Under Sail by C.P. Snow. Page 126.

"Ian, you've heard some of your stupid friends talk of a man's not being a 'gentleman'. If they didn't know his past history, how would they decide?"

"Purely by externals," I said. Finbow pounced on the absurdity at once. "As the entire idea of 'gentlemanliness is one of the externals, that's hardly a profound remark," he said. "The whole point is, which externals?"

"Accent, perhaps," I suggested. "Manners possibly – all that other thing."

"Too indefinite," he answered. "Usually those tests would keep out men who weren't gentlemen; but they'd often let through people from your stupid friends would exclude if they knew their history. Accent, for instance: anyone with a decent ear can acquire standard English just as he can learn a foreign language. Even if he starts from Lancashire, he can learn to speak the civilized tongue. And be quite indistinguishable from you or Philip. With very little effort, he can achieve English which will pass anywhere; he probably never could manage the curious bleat of the minor public schools, but that is a special gift of Providence, like sword swallowing – which in fact it closely resembles.

I share Finbows dislike for young men who make a twittering noise in the roofs of their mouth's, and we chuckled together. Finbow went on:

"No, accent's no good as a test. Nor are manners. I've met at least two gigolos from remote parts of the provinces who would outshine any Wykehamist I've ever seen. I defy anybody to tell them from young men just going into the Diplomatic Service. No, Ian, your stupid friends wouldn't be able to decide on those externals."

"How would they?" I asked.

"They wouldn't," said Finbow. "They're always liable to treat a man as one of themselves, on the evidence of all these tests of gentlemanliness; then they find out he came from Nuneaton, and say to each other in old Berkleyan tones that they really knew all along that he wasn't 'quite a gentleman'."

"I daresay you're right," I said. "But where's the connection between gentlemen and William's shirt?"

"It's simply this," Finbow smiled. "Your stupid friends aren't capable of it, but with a little ingenuity we could invent tests which discriminate between the sheep and the goats. The sheep being old Berkleyan and they're kind – and the goats, all the rest of this democratic state of ours."

I ought perhaps to mention that Finbow always professed an amused attachment upon English institutions. He had a sort of political and social agnosticism which I have found in several Civil Servants. Once he defined his attitude in the phrase: "Old-established English traditions – there aren't any such things! They're usually extremely new, they're rarely English, and as for the traditions – we always change them whenever there's a selfish end to be pursued. The only thing that can be said for them is that they're unutterably comic."