men, described as the corner-stone of the undertaking, contained as many as were disposed to inform against delinquents; the money arising from informations being devoted to the help of the poor, except a third part of the penalty against Sabbath-breaking, which the magistrate had the power to distribute, but which had never, so it was said, been bestowed upon the informers themselves.

The necessity of laws for the punishment of offences against society and individual rights is plain, but the efficacy of legislation for the suppression of immorality and irreligion is more than questioned. Fines and imprisonments can only produce a skin-deep reformation, and when relaxed are followed by fresh outbursts of vicious indulgence; and if the least objectionable part of the plan now under review was defective, the encouragement given to informers was adapted to produce bad results, only second to those which were assailed. To stir up people to lay informations against their neighbours, must breed mutual suspicion; and with the honest intention of destroying one evil, provoke another into fiercer rage. The laws against drunkenness, houses of ill-fame, and gambling, were wise and good, and deserved to be put in force; but the laws against some kinds of conduct, called Sabbath-breaking, and profaneness, and blasphemy, were of a different class and of a doubtful character. Blasphemy included the denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, so that any honest and upright Socinian came under the scourge, it being sophistically added as a note at the bottom of the published abstract, "This statute punishes not the error, but the impudence of the offender." It should be stated further, that over the enforcement of the law against immorality and irreligion an even-handed justice did not preside. The bandage

sometimes fell from the eyes of that impartial lady. The cases of rich and poor, of high and low, were not always weighed in the same scales. The crusade against sinners in the valleys and low lands of social life was most vigorously carried on; the sinners on the hills were left to do very much as they liked. De Foe exposed this kind of double-dealing.

But the result of the prosecutions was such that the good people, working in this way, regarded themselves as very successful. Seventy or eighty warrants a week were executed upon street swearers, so that the constables "found it difficult to take up a swearer in divers of our streets." Sunday markets ceased; drovers and carriers were stopped; bakers did not dare to appear with their baskets, or "barbers with their pot, basin, or periwigbox;" hundreds of bad houses became closed; and "thousands of lewd persons were imprisoned, fined, and whipped, and the Tower end of the town much purged from that pestilential generation of night-walkers, forty or fifty of them being sent in a week to Bridewell, from whence, at their own desire, they were transported to America, to gain an honest livelihood in the plantations."

Means of another and an unexceptionable nature were employed for the furtherance of the general object. The distribution of tracts-now become so conspicuous and powerful an agency—was then systematically commenced, and we notice in the scanty but gradually increasing list, Kind Caution to Profane Swearers and The Soldier's Monitor, the last of these publications indicating the interest taken in the spiritual welfare of the army. A hundred thousand short tracts against drunkenness and other vices were distributed throughout the country, and we meet with the statement that especial care was taken to present them to culprits after their conviction. Connected with this

enterprise appears the germ of another usage, exceedingly popular in our own times-the preaching of sermons on particular occasions in behalf of societies. Episcopal clergymen advocated them from the pulpit of Bow Church, Nonconforming ministers from the pulpit of Salter's Hall. With eloquence, or with varying degrees in the want of it; with spirit, or with dulness; with a pleasant voice, as of one who can play well on an instrument, or with an unmusical delivery, which grated harshly on sensitive ears,—did these divines stand up before congregations, crowded or scanty, charmed or disappointed, enthusiastic or critical; after which a collection was made, yielding a goodly amount of gold and silver, or the reverse. Then, as now, secretaries would be filled with anxiety, committees would listen with a feeling of responsibility, praises and censures would follow the appeals, 'complacency would be inspired, mortification would be provoked, thanks would be returned; and the good and evil, the grace and the frailty, the virtues and the infirmities incident to such occasions would begin to manifest themselves on a small scale, in prophetic type of what obtains in the May anniversaries of the nineteenth century.

The meetings at Bow Church, graced by the presence and assisted by the advocacy of such men as Patrick, Burnet, Trelawny, Kidder, Williams, Stanhope, and Bray, were held once a quarter; and, besides sermons delivered on behalf of these societies, there were sermons preached, exposing the vices of the age. In different parts of the country efforts of this kind were made. Stratford, the Bishop, and Fog, the Dean of Chester, warmly took up the new cause, and the picturesque old city in the north became head-quarters for the new crusade.

Societies for the reformation of manners gradually multiplied, and within a few years they existed numerously, not only in England, but in Scotland and Ireland; and the undulations of the excitement rolled over Europe, touched Flanders, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and also reached as far as the West Indies and North America.

There were not wanting Churchmen who fixed a jealous eye on these proceedings, seeing that they combined Conformists and Nonconformists in works of charity. The goodness of the object did not prevent disapproval of union with schismatics. Archbishop Sharpe, whose suspicions as to the Young Men's Societies have been already mentioned, refused to countenance in any way those on a broader basis; and Henry Newcome, son of the eminent Presbyterian of that name, when preaching a Reformation Lecture, railed against Dissenters, a circumstance which led Matthew Henry to say, "The Lord be judge between us. Perhaps it will be found that the body of Dissenters have been the strongest bulwarks against profaneness in England." The practice of laying informations sometimes produced bad blood in Church circles. 66 My brother Hulton," Henry records in his Diary, "on Lord's-day was seven-night, observing the churchwardens of St. Peter's with a strange minister and others, go to Mr. Holland's alehouse, and sit there three hours, told the Recorder of it. The Bishop came to hear of it, and Mr. Hulton desired his Lordship to admonish them. They set light by the Bishop, and challenged the magistrates to fine them; whereupon Mr. Hulton was summoned to inform against them, and did so, and they were fined, but they were very abusive to him.' The cooperation of Churchmen and Dissenters excited political suspicion; and Vernon, Secretary of State, by no means

friendly to such movements, told the Duke of Shrewsbury that the Archbishop apprehended their design was to undermine the Church, and that the Lord Chancellor thought they rather aimed at discrediting the Administration. Even William approved of a watch being kept over the movement, and Somers was for finding out all ways of getting into their secret, and by clandestine means to defeat clandestine objects. Not that Dissenters were suspected of treason, but his Lordship wished to know "what discontented Churchmen or discarded statesmen meant by insinuating themselves into their familiarities."1

In one instance the activity of the reformers occasioned a riot. May Fair reached its zenith in the reign of William III., when, in addition to the sale of leather and cattle, all sorts of exhibitions took place adapted to high and low, rich and poor. Graceful dancers attracted noblemen; duck-hunting in a pond at the back of a wooden house-which then, in rural simplicity, stood in what is now the heart of a west-end population-drew together crowds of the vulgar; and for the curious of all ranks there was provided a model of the City of Amsterdam, carved in wood; and, amongst other wonders, a body was shown with the words Deus Meus written on the pupil of one eye, and on the other a Hebrew inscription, which had to be taken on trust. Want of loyalty was not one of the vices of the place, for a play-bill informed the public that during the time of May Fair an excellent droll would be performed, called, "King William's Happy Deliverance, and Glorious Triumph over his Enemies." Even ecclesiastical zeal penetrated this multifarious assemblage, for the bill gave as a second title of the piece, "The Consultation of the Pope, Devil, French King, and

1 Vernon Cor., ii. 128-130.