Against Vice [they have] been so severe

That none but Men of Quality may swear.*

But, as the same satirist remarked, they had to deal with . an Hundred Acts of Parliament.

Those useless Scarecrows of neglected Laws,

That miss the Effect because they miss the Cause.

Like the "workhouses," they were an experiment. They proved this, at least, that after 1688 the public conscience was awaking. "Am I my brother's keeper?" was, now and then, a text for their many sermons; but their dominant purpose was to make the law " a terror to evil doers."

Care for the sick was a notable feature of London in the three decades before 1750. Londoners, free to associate and to form committees, were in this respect probably far in advance of Paris. According to Sir William Petty, the poorest hospitals in London were, in 1687, better than the best in Paris; and we have no grounds for supposing that they deteriorated during the next two generations. Between 1719 and 1750, St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's were rebuilt and enlarged; and the Westminster, Guy's, London, Charing Cross, Middlesex, St. George's, and several hospitals for special diseases were founded. “I never come to London (wrote a correspondent of the Old Whig, of 1737) but I find some new hospital . abuilding." Lady Bellaston gave Tom Jones fifty pounds, "though she did not give much into the hackney charities of her age, such as building hospitals.' Bequests to hospitals became common-not always to the satisfaction of the near of kin; for on the eighteenth of July, 1748, the General Advertiser published this obituary notice :

Last week died Dr. Brown, a Physician of great eminence in Bedford; and has left his fortunes, which were considerable, to a very great number of relations, notwithstanding the current vanity of this age to leave a fortune to some publick body which might give him a name and overlook his own kindred.

In 1751, Hogarth published his "Four Stages of Cruelty to Animals," "with the hope, in some degree, to correct the bar

*The London Gazette for January 22-26, 1701 (No. 3778), advertised the opening of a "Royal Bagnio in Newgate St. . . . where persons may swear to what degree they please, there being several distinct rooms and private for that purpose."

barous treatment of animals." Years before 1751 the magazines had begun to condemn cruel sports and to inculcate compassion to the brute creation.

Thanks to Law, Bedford and Collyer, the stage was improving, and Colley Cibber felt able to write of Vanbrugh :—

At length he own'd that plays should let you see

Not only what you are, but ought to be.

As Mr. G. M. Trevelyan suggests, we may owe something to Beau Nash; for Mrs. Fitzpatrick told Sophia Western that he did his best to save her " youth and innocence and beauty " from the wiles of a fortune hunter.

London's Central Criminal Court would stand aghast at the number of acquittals at the Old Bailey under the Georges. On July 17, 1748, eleven out of twenty-four accused, the next day thirteen out of twenty-six, and on the third day, six out of thirteen were acquitted. This proportion was not uncommon. At the sessions for September, 1736, sixty-four of the seventy-nine who passed through the dock were found "not guilty." Mandeville disliked such weakness. "Juries and judges," he complained, "are touched with compassion. Prosecutors relent. A man of good nature is not easily reconciled with the taking away of another man's life."

The hospitals, the schools and even the "workhouses" and societies for the reformation of manners, show that during a couple of generations some Londoners had, like that "eminent and publick-spirited citizen, Mr. Tho. Firmin," been preparing a seedbed. By 1750, other Londoners were beginning to gather in some first-fruits.

Few good words have of late been devoted to praise of the London of the first-half of the eighteenth century. However deplorable its condition may then have been, some who were familiar with its streets and inhabitants were proud of it. Defoe's Augusta Triumphans " shows by its title how he gloried in the possibilities of London's future. Steele could delight in its present. Towards the end of Queen Anne's reign, he embarked at Richmond at four o'clock one summer morning, and landed at Strand Bridge with the apricots and melons for Covent Garden market; spent the day among fruit girls and good-humoured

crowds (“ all the mob have good humour," he said); saw rich men on the Exchange and many pretty hands busy in the folding of ribands; passed the evening at Will's, and was led by a light to his lodgings at two o'clock next morning, having found" every object a pleasing one."*

In 1711, Matthew Tindal declared that foreigners were "surprised at the wonderful good order and regulation they find in this great city, and are forced to confess that in other great cities... people are far from being kept in such good order; and there is no venturing abroad at night without the utmost hazard." "The suburbs (he wrote) are so much greater than they were in Charles II's time, but even the soldiers disbanded after the peace are less lawless; crime is less, and not only the laity, but the clergy are better than in Charles II's time." Gay in his "Trivia" tells us that there were plenty of quick-witted and light-fingered gentry in the streets of London; but, comparing it with continental cities, he exulted in its freedom from bravos and assassins. He hails :

Happy Augusta! Law-defended town!

Here no dark lanthorns shade the villain's frown.
No Spanish jealousies thy lanes infest,

Nor Roman vengeance stabs the unwary breast;
Here tyranny ne'er lifts her purple hand,
But liberty and justice guard the land.
No bravos here profess the bloody trade,

Nor is the Church the murderer's refuge made.

Mandeville, when in his attack on charity schools he wanted to make the worst of everything, dwelt on the " abundance of thefts and robberies," but had nothing to say of murders. The London Journal thought, on February 13, 1731, that London was becoming less safe. "Till within these ten or twelve years (it wrote), London was the most remarkable city in Europe for the safety of its inhabitants and others who had occasion to walk the streets late at night." César de Saussure, in one of his letters, told a friend how, after the mid-night of September 17, 1725, he—a foreigner who knew not a word of English-wandered, lost and disconsolate, through the dark streets.† No footpads assailed him.

*Spectator, 454.

"A Foreign View of England in the reigns of George I. and George II." Letters by Monsieur César de Saussure. London, 1902.

Defoe noticed a cessation of street robberies until " the introduction of this pious opera," but possibly the extraordinary timidity of wayfarers did more than the "Beggars' Opera" to encourage robbery. "One man robbed Mr. T. Winnington and his servant, his coachman and postillion" of all they had. A single highwayman robbed " seven coaches and collected a 1000l." And so on daily in the newspapers, year after year. Evidently Partridge was not alone in his opinion that "a thousand naked men are nothing to one pistol; for though it is true, it will kill but one at a single discharge, yet who can tell but that one may be himself?"

There was a touch of indignation in the newspapers when a robbery was perpetrated in London earlier than eleven o'clock at night or later than six o'clock in the morning. John Wesley was abroad at all hours without harm. We should like to know how often Johnson put into practice his precept to readers of his "London":

Prepare for death if here at night you roam,

And sign your will before you sup from home.

Few were carried to Tyburn for murder, and fewer still for murder in the street. Bravado often led culprits to multiply their exploits; but allowing for their vainglory, criminals must have been much fewer than crimes. The lamplighter began to help the constable. In October, 1736, a newspaper, after informing the public that " St. Martin's, St. James's and other quarters of the West End are now to be lit up of a night," urged the East End to copy. Then it would be "a surprising and agreeable sight to the foreigner to walk from Tothill Fields to Limehousecomputed seven miles-finely illuminated all the way, the like not to be met with in the world."

Two hundred years ago, the London crowd was as goodhumoured as it is now and as Steele found it on his halcyon day. It was comparatively well fed-better fed than the Paris crowd. That careful observer, Cantillon, writing before 1727, stated that a labourer in Middlesex earned four times as much as his brother across the Channel; and Hogarth's rabble and his delightful "Fishgirl" are immeasurably better nourished than the starvelings of his "Calais Gate." If, as Defoe said, English people ate and drank three times as much as any sort of foreigners, their feasts gave them a contented mind.

The rabble was not bloodthirsty. Dumas could have made but little of it. On August 16, 1740, some forty thousand people met in conflict on Kennington Common. No lives were lost; few heads were broken. Four years earlier, English and Irish labourers were at feud. The Irish vowed that they "would wash their hands in English blood." The opposing hosts met on Hackney Common. "The magistrates prevented the further effects of their rage, and utmost fury. The mob retired home and all was quiet." Whitefield and Wesley preached in London to multitudes. According to the Weekly Miscellany (January 12, 1740), " Two or three enthusiasts or impostors shall at an hour's warning be able to collect a company of forty, or fifty thousand fools to hear a pack of raving nonsense." On Easter Monday, 1742, Whitefield preached in Moorfields. His eloquence drew the crowds from the booths. The Merry Andrews organized a "riot." Next evening, his preaching angered the boxers and gamesters of Marylebone Fields. No harm was done on either occasion-children sat through all. The congregations were "turned into lambs," save when a man threatened Whitefield with a sword and was seized by " the enraged multitude." Unlike the Paris mob, the London mob was not sorry to be defrauded of a hanging. It could enjoy a jest. A jury had acquitted Roger Allen on the ground that he was weak-minded. His fellows assembled to celebrate the happy event. He made a speech. He said: "Gentlemen, I thank you kindly for this honour; but the great liberty of mobbing a justice now and then and my own life had certainly been lost if I had not had wit enough to prove myself a fool."*

The orgy of gin-drinking was, Mrs. Eric George tells us, at its worst between 1730 and 1751. One hoary tradition we feel free to challenge. From the days of Smollett to those of Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, historians have printed and reprinted the legend: "Drunk for a id.; dead drunk for 2d.; clean straw for nothing." But Smollett does not say that he had seen these lines. They are on the sign in Hogarth's "Gin Lane," published in 1751. Hogarth's works are "historical documents," but not evidence of particular facts. We owe our one clue to Mr. Wheatley and, thanks to him, to Mr. F. G. Stephens's "Catalogue of

*"Life and Times of Sir Thomas Deveil," London, 1748; p. 42.