By heavenly means, in enforcing and encouraging a reformation of manners, by suppressing of vice and immorality, and punishing profaneness and licentiousness. Our youth are corrupted by filthy, lewd ballads, sung and sold publicly in our streets; nay, unlicensed and unstamped, notwithstanding acts of parliament to the contrary.
Coachmen, carmen, &c., are indulged in swearing after the most blasphemous, shocking, and unaccountable rate that ever was known. New oaths and blasphemies are daily uttered and invented; and rather than not exercise this hellish talent, they will vent their curses on their very horses; and, oh stupid! damn the blood of a post, rather than want something to curse.
Our common women, too, have learned this vice; and not only strumpets, but labouring women, who keep our markets, and vend things about street, swear and curse at a most hideous rate. Their children learn it from their parents, and those of the middle, or even the better sort of people, if they pass through the streets to school, or to play, catch the infection, and carry home such words as must consequently be very shocking to sober parents.
Our youth, in general, have too much liberty; the Sabbath is not kept with due solemnity; masters and mistresses of families are too remiss in the care of the souls committed to their charge. Family prayer is neglected; and, to the shame of scoffers be it spoken, too much ridiculed. All ages and sexes, if in health, should be obliged to attend public worship, according to their respective opinions. Were it only to keep youth out of harm's way it would do well. But it is to be hoped, if their parents, masters, or mistresses, should oblige their attendance at public devotion, they would edify by what they should hear, and many wicked acts would be stifled in their infancy, and checked even in the intention, by good and useful doctrine.
Our common people make it a day of debauch, and get so drunk on a Sunday they cannot work for a day or two following. Nay, since the use of Geneva has become so common, many get so often drunk they cannot work at all, but run from one irregularity to another, till at last they become arrant rogues. And this is the foundation of all our present complaints.
We will suppose a man able to maintain himself and family by his trade, and at the same time to be a Geneva drinker. This fellow first makes himself incapable of working by being continually drunk; this runs him behindhand, and he either pawns or neglects his work, for which reason nobody will employ him. At last, fear of arrests, his own hunger, the cries of his family for bread, his natural desire to support an irregular life, and a propense hatred to labour, turn but too many an honest tradesman into an arrant desperate rogue. And these are commonly the means that furnish us with thieves and villains in general.
Thus is a man, that might be useful in a body politic, rendered obnoxious to the same: and if this trade of wickedness goes on, they will grow and increase upon us, insomuch that we shall not dare to stir out of our habitations; nay, it will be well if they arrive not to the impudence of plundering our houses at noonday.
Where is the courage of the English nation, that a gentleman, with six or seven servants, shall be robbed by one single highwayman? Yet we have lately had instances of this; and for this we may thank our effeminacy, our toupee wigs, and powdered pates, our tea, and other scandalous fopperies; and, above all, the disuse of noble and manly sports, so necessary to a brave people, once in vogue, but now totally lost among us.
Let not the reader think I run from my subject if I search the bottom of the distemper before I propose a cure, which having done, though indeed but slightly, for this is an argument could be carried to a much greater length, I proceed next to propose earthly means in the manner following.
Let the watch be composed of stout able-bodied men, and of those at least treble the number now subsisting, that is to say, a watchman to every forty houses, twenty on one side of the way, and twenty on the other; for it is observable that a man cannot well see distinctly beyond the extent of twenty houses in a row; if it is a single row, and no opposite houses, the charge must be greater and their safety less. This man should be elected and paid by the housekeepers themselves, to prevent misapplication and abuse, so much complained of in the distribution of public money.