I will here narrate a circumstance which much impressed my mind some ten years since, several years previous to my entering the London City Mission. A policeman had been brutally murdered at Spitalfields, and the scene of his murder was described as being one of great violence and criminality. One evening, shortly afterwards, the writer happened to be in the neighbourhood, and observed that a very great disturbance was going on. He was led to dive into the nest of courts and alleys towards the scene of violence, and stopped at a door. A man who was standing there made a remark to the writer, and said, he was once riotous and dissipated, but had learned better now. I inquired how he had become changed. "I have cause to bless God," said the man, who I understood to have become a member of the Wesleyans,-"I have cause to bless God for the visits of a City Missionary." I could not but be forcibly struck with the circumstance of finding the first person I addressed in a most depraved neighbourhood, in the very street, if I mistake not, in which an officer of justice had just been brutally murdered in the execution of his duty-I could not but feel impressed with the circumstance, that the first person I casually

addressed in such a neighbourhood, should prove by his own confession, a convert under the labours of the London City Mission.

A Society so eminently adapted to meet the spiritual wants of the poor, and the sphere of whose labours is the metropolis of the world, the centre of British glory and wealth, should not be so positioned as to be unable, even whilst exercising the greatest economy in the disbursement of the funds intrusted to its care, to employ more than half the number of Missionaries really needed to visit properly the poor of London; and it must be added, for the vast importance of the subject demands the avowal, such a Society would not be so positioned, were the Christian public properly alive to the great responsibility which overshadows it.

Desperate and depraved as the scenes of the writer's labours were, it nevertheless was formerly much worse. The change is in a measure attributable to the efforts of the London City Mission. The improved system of constabulary police, introduced by the late Sir Robert Peel, has also had much to do with the alteration; but we ought to bear in mind, whilst most thankful for the greatly increased measure of order which the

improved system of police has brought about, that the most perfect system of worldly order will not convert one soul. The law may become increasingly "a terror to evil doers" under wise government, but it is only by the terrors of the Lord that men can be brought to "repent and become converted." Formerly a large portion of this district was called "Jack Ketch's Warren," from the fact of the number of persons who were hung at Newgate from these courts and alleys, especially at the period when £1 notes were in circulation, and forgeries of them were so common. Old men, who were formerly watchmen in this locality, have described to me the desperate scenes which were formerly enacted. The disturbances that took place were of so desperate a character, that from thirty to forty constables. would be marched down with cutlasses, it being frequently impossible for officers to act in less numbers, or unarmed. The most extraordinary characters lived here. Those who have read the Newgate Calendar, may remember a notorious female foot-pad who is described as living in Sharp's Alley. A woman also lived close by who was hung at Newgate, but lived for many years afterwards. She kept harbours for thieves and

other bad characters for nearly twenty years subsequently. This person was condemned to death for passing forged £1 notes, and by some means managed to introduce a silver tube into the gullet. Prison regulations were at that period very lax. As many as ten and even more persons would be executed at Newgate at once, and the care which is now exercised was not taken then. She was delivered to her friends for burial immediately after the execution, and hurried home, where, after considerable difficulty, she was restored to life. But as many thieves and old officers have informed me, most of the old gangs are broken up. The White Hart, in Turnmill Street, opposite Cock Court, formerly a noted house of call for foot-pads and highwaymen, has long ceased to be a public-house at all. Twenty and thirty years ago, a systematic confederation of all kinds of desperate persons existed in this neighbourhood, of which the present condition is a mere relic. The old system of parochial boards of watch was a mere farce. "You see, sir," said an old watchman to me, ain't no comparison between the old charleys and these new police. If a watchman brought many people to the watch-house he'd get a hint, (you

"there

understand me,) not to make himself quite so busy." The cost of prosecutions to the county was considered, and unless it was some very daring offence that had been committed, little effort appears to have been made to apprehend offenders. We used to read of some inebriated ruffian knocking down twenty or thirty watchmen as fast as they came up. It is quite true that many men employed were old, or feeble, or deficient in stature and physique, and easily knocked down, but there can be no doubt also, but that watchmen who were said to be knocked down, frequently tumbled down. They had their orders not to put the county to needless expenses for prosecutions. Under the present improved system, the very reverse is the fact, and no pains are spared to detect and bring thieves to justice. "It ain't no go, as it used to be," said a housebreaker to me. "How is that?" said I. He replied, (I omit some vulgarities,) "Why, if you get inside a house quietly, don't you see, jist as yer a coming out, there's some policeman a waitin' to ketch you in his arms, and they puts such lots on at nights so thick, it ain't no use a trying.” This young man attended my meetings, and appeared to have given up his habits of depreda