In one word, our aim and hope are to plant on these highlands a community of gentlemen and ladies; not that artificial class which goes by those grand names, both in Europe and here, the joint product of feudalism and wealth, but in a society in which the humblest members, who live by the labour of their own hands, will be of such strain and culture that they will be able to meet princes in the gate, without embarrassment and without self-assertion, should any such strange person ever present themselves before the gate tower of Rugby in the New World.

Thomas Hughes, Founder of Rugby,
in his opening day speech October 5, 1880