they are capable of it Our Laws seem to take no Cognizance of such perhaps for the same reason that Lycurgus made no Law against Parricide because he would not have the Sin named among his Citizens Now the Poor Man sees no such Dignity in Vice as to study Degrees we are downright in Wickedness as we are in our Dealings if we are Drunk 't is plain Drunkenness Swearing and Whoring is all Blunderbus with us we don't affect such Niceties in our Conversation and the Justices use us accordingly nothing but the Stocks or the House of Correction is the Case when we are brought before them but when our Masters the Gentlemen come to their Refin'd Practice and Sin by the Rules of Quality we find nothing comes of it but false Heraldry the Vice is punish'd by the Vice and the Punishment renews the Crime The Case in short is this the Lewdness Prophaneness and Immorality of the Gentry which is the main Cause of the General Debauchery of the Kingdom is not at all toucht by our Laws as they are now Executed and while it remains so the Reformation of Manners can never be brought to pass nor Prophaneness and Immorality Suppress'd and therefore the Punishing the Poor distinctly is a Mock upon the good Designs of the King and Parliament an Act of Injustice upon them to punish them and let others who are as guilty go free and a sort of Cruelty too in taking the advantage of their Poverty to make them suffer because they want Estates to purchase their Exemption We have some weak Excuses for this Matter which must be considered As 1 The Justice of the Peace is a Passive Magistrate till an information be brought before him and is not to take notice of any thing but as it is laid in Fact and brought to an Affidavit Now if an Affidavit be made before a Justice that such or such a man Swore or was Drunk he must he cannot avoid Fining him the Law obliges him to it let his Quality be what it will so that the Defect is not in the Law not in the Justice but in the want of Information 2 The Name of an Evidence or Informer is so scandalous that to attempt to inform against a man for the most open Breach of the Laws of Morality is enough to denominate a man unfit for Society a Rogue and an Informer are Synonimous in the Vulgar Acceptation so much is the real Detection of the openest Crimes against God and Civil Government Discouraged and Avoided 3 The Impossibility of the Cure is such and the Habit has so obtain'd upon all Mankind that it seems twisted with Human Nature as an Appendix to Natural Frailty which it is impossible to separate from it For Answer 1. T is true the Justice of the Peace is in some respect a Passive Magistrate and does not act but by Information but such Information would be brought if it were encouraged if Justices of the Peace did acquaint themselves with their Neighbourhood they would soon hear of the Immoralities of the Parish and if they did impartially Execute the Law on such as offended without respect of Person they would soon have an Account of the Persons and Circumstances Besides 't is not want of Information but want of punishing what they have information of A Poor Man informs against a Great Man the Witness is discouraged the man goes unpunish'd and the Poor Man gets the scandal of an Informer and then 't is but too often that our Justices are not men of extraordinary Morals themselves and who shall Inform a Justice of the Peace that such a man Swore when he may be heard to Swear himself as fast as another or who shall bring a man before a Justice for being Drunk when the Justice is so Drunk himself he cannot order him to be set in the Stocks 2. Besides the Justice has a power to punish any Fact he himself sees committed and to enquire into any he hears of casually and if he will stand still and see those Acts of Immorality committed before his Face who shall bring a Poor Man before him to be punished Thus I have heard a Thousand horrid Oaths sworn on a Bowling Green in the presence of a Justice of the Peace and he take no notice of it and go home the next hour and set a man in the Stocks for being Drunk As to the Scandal of Informing 't is an Error in Custom and a great Sin against Justice 't is necessary indeed that all Judgment should be according to Evidence and to discourage Evidence is to discourage Justice but that a man in Trial of the Morality of his Neighbour should be ashamed to appear must have some particular Cause 1. It proceeds from the Modishness of the Vice it has so obtain'd upon mens Practices that to appear against what almost all men approve seems malicious and has a certain prospect either of Revenge or of a Mercenary Wretch that Informs meerly to get a Reward 'T is true if no Reward be plac'd upon an Information no man will take the trouble and again if too great a Reward Men of Honour shun the thing because they scorn the Fee and to Inform meerly for the Fee has something of a Rascal in it too and from these Reasons arises the backwardness of the People The very same Rich men we speak of are the persons who discourage the Discovery of Vice by scandalizing the Informer a man that is any thing of a Gentleman scorns it and the Poor still Mimick the Humour of the Rich and hate an Informer as they do the Devil 'T is strange the Gentlemen should be asham'd to detect the Breach of those Laws which they were not asham'd to make but the very Name of an Informer has gain'd so black an Idea in the minds of People because some who have made a Trade of Informing against People for Religion have misbehaved themselves that truly 't will be hard to bring any man either of Credit or Quality to attempt it But the main thing which makes our Gentlemen backward in the prosecution of Vice is their practising the same Crimes themselves and they have so much wicked Modesty and Generosity in them being really no Enemies to the thing it self that they cannot with any sort of freedom punish in others what they practise themselves In the Times of Executing the Laws against Dissenters we found a great many Gentlemen very Vigorous in prosecuting their Neighbours they did not stick to appear in Person to disturb Meetings and demolish the Meeting Houses and rather than fail would be Informers themselves the reason was because they had also a dislike to the think but we never found a Dissenting Gentleman or Justice of the Peace forward to do thus because they approved of it Now were our Gentlemen and Magistrates real Enemies to the Immoralities of this Age did they really hate Drunkenness as a Vice they would be forward and zealous to root
Conversing and their common Behaviour among their Servants and Neighbours 1. The Gentry They are the Original of the Modes and Customs and Manners of their Neighbours and their Examples in the Countries especially are very moving There are three several Vices which have the principal Management of the greatest part of Mankind viz. Drunkenness Swearing and Whoring all of them very ill becoming a Gentlemen however Custom may have made them Modish Where none of these Three are in a House there is certainly something of a Plantation of God in the Family for they are such Epidemick Distempers that hardly Human Nature is entirely free from them 1. Drunkenness that brutish Vice a Sin so sordid and so much a Force upon Nature that had God Almighty enjoyn'd it a Duty I believe many a man would have ventur'd the loss of Heaven rather than have perform'd it The Pleasure of it seems to be so secretly hid that wild Heathen Nations know nothing of the matter 't is only discover'd by the wise people of these Northern Countries who are grown Proficients in Vice Philosophers in Wickedness who can extract a Pleasure to themselves in losing their Understanding and make themselves sick at heart for their Diversion If the History of this well bred Vice was to be written 't would plainly appear that it begun among the Gentry and from them was handed down to the poorer sort who still love to be like their Betters After the Restitution of King Charles the Second when drinking the King's Health became the distinction between a Cavalier and a Roundhead Drunkenness began its Reign and it has Reign'd almost Forty Years The Gentry caress'd this Beastly Vice at such a Rate that no Companion no Servant was thought proper unless he could bear a Quantity of Wine And to this day 't is added to the Character of a Man as an additional Title when you would speak well of him He is an honest drunken Fellow as if his Drunkenness was a Recommendation of his Honesty From the practice of this nasty Faculty our Gentlemen have arriv'd to the teaching of it and that it might be effectually preservd to the next Age have very early instructed the Youth in it Nay so far has Custom prevail'd that the Top of a Gentleman's Entertainment has been to make his Friend drunk and the Friend is so much reconcil'd to it that he takes that for the effect of his Kindness which he ought as much to be affronted at as if he had kick'd him down Stairs Thus 't is become a Science and but that the Instruction proves so easy and the Youth too apt to learn possibly we might have had a Colledge erected for it before now The further perfection of this Vice among the Gentry will appear in two things that 't is become the Subject of their Glory and the way of expressing their Joy for any publick Blessing Iack said a Gentleman of very high Quality when after the Debate in the House of Lords King William was voted into the vacant Throne Iack says he God damn ye Jack go home to your Lady and tell her we have got a Protestant King and Queen and go and make a Bonfire as big as a House and bid the Bntler make ye all drunk ye Dog Here was Sacrificing to the Devil for a Thanksgiving to God Other Vices are committed as Vices and men act them in private and are willing to hide them but Drunkenness they are so fond of that they will glory in it boast of it and endeavour to promote it as much as possible in others 'T is a Triumph to a Champion of the Bottle to repeat how many Quarts of Wine he has drank at a sitting and how he made such and such honest Fellows drunk Men Lye and Forswear and hide it and are asham'd of it as indeed they have reason to do But Drunkenness and Whoring are Accomplishments People value themselves upon repeat them with pleasure and affect a sort of Vanity in the History are content all the World should be Witnesses of their Intemperance have made the Crime a Badge of Honour to their Breeding and introduce the practice as a Fashion And whoever gives himself the trouble to reflect on the Custom of our Gentlemen in their Families encouraging and promoting this Vice of Drunkenness among the poor Commons will not think it a Scandal upon the Gentry of England if we say That the Mode of drinking as 't is now practised had its Original from the Practice of the Country Gentlemen and they again from the Court. It may be objected and God forbid it should not That there are a great many of our Nobility and Gentlemen who are Men of Honour and Men of Morals and therefore this Charge is not universal To which we answer 'T is universal for all that because those very Gentlemen though they are negatively clear as to the Commission of the Crimes we speak of yet are positively guilty in not executing that Power the Law has put into their hands with an Impartial Vigor For where was that Gentleman or Justice of the Peace ever yet found who executed the Terms of the Law upon a Drunken Swearing Lewd Gentleman his Neighbour but the Quality of the Person has been a License to the open Exercise of the worst Crimes as if there were any Baronets Knights or Squires in the next World who because of those little step Custom had raised them on higher than their Neighbours should be exempted from the Divine Judicature or that as Captain Vrats said who was Hang'd for Murth'ring Esquire â—hynn God would show them some respect as they were Gentlemen If there were any reason why a Rich Man should be permitted in the publick Exercise of Open Immoralities and not the Poor Man something might be said But if there be any difference it lies the other way for the Vices of a Poor Man affect only himself but the Rich Man's Wickedness affects all the Neighbourhood gives offence to the Sober encourages and hardens the Lewd and quite overthrows the weak Resolutions of such as are but indifferently fix'd in their Virtue and Morality If my own Watch goes false it deceives me and none else but if the Town Clock goes false it deceives the whole Parish The Gentry are the Leaders of the Mob if they are Lewd and Drunken the others strive to imitate them if they Discourage Vice and Intemperance the other will not be so forward in it nor so fond of it To think then to effect a Reformation by Punishing the Poor while the Rich seem to Enjoy a Charter for wickedness is like taking away the Effect that the Cause may cease We find some People very fond of Monopolizing a Vice they would have all of it to themselves they must as my Lord Rochester said of himself Sin like a Lord little sneaking Sins won't serve turn but they must be Lewd at a rate above the Common Size to let the World see
the practice of it out of the Neighbourhood they would not be backward or asham'd to detect Vice to disturb Drunken Assemblies to disperse those Plantations of Leachery the Publick Bawdy-Houses which are almost as openly allowed as the Burdelloes in Italy They would be willing to have all sorts of Vices Suppress'd and glory in putting their hands to the Work they would not be asham'd to appear in the detecting Debauchery nor afraid to embroil themselves with their Rich Neighbours 'T is Guilt of the same Fact which makes Connivance and till that Guilt be removed the Gentlemen of England neither will not can indeed with any kind of Honour put their hands to the work of Reforming it in their Neighbours But I think 't is easy to make it appear that this difficulty of Informing may be removed and there need not be much occasion for that Scandalous Employment 'T is in the power of the Gentry of England to Reform the whole Kingdom without either Laws Proclamations or Informers and without their Concurrence all the Laws Proclamations and Declarations in the World will have no Effect the Vigour of the Laws consists in their Executive Power Ten thousand Acts of Parliament signify no more than One single Proclamation unless the Gentlemen in whose hands the Execution of those Laws is placed take care to see them duly made use of and how can Laws be duly Executed but by an Impartial Distribution of equal Rewards and Punishments without regard to the Quality and Degree of the Persons The Laws push on the Justices now and they take care to go no faster than they are driven but would the Justices push on the Laws Vice would flee before them as Dust in the Wind and Immoralities would be soon Suppress'd but it can never be expected that the Magistrates should push on the Laws to a free Suppression of Immoralities till they Reform themselves and their Great Neighbours Reform themselves that there may be none to punish who are too big for the Magistrate to venture upon Would the Gentry of England decry the Modishness of Vice by their own Practice would they dash it out of Countenance by disowning it that Drunkeness and Oaths might once come into disesteem and be out of Fashion and a man be valued the less for them that he that will Swear and be Drunk shall be counted a Rake and not fit for a Gentleman's Company This would do more to Reforming the rest of Mankind than all the Punishments the Law can inflict the Evil encreased by Example and must be suppress'd the same way If the Gentry were thus Reform'd their Families would be so too No Servant would be Entertain'd no Workman Employ'd no Shopkeeper would be Traded with by a Gentleman but such as like themselves were Sober and Honest a Lewd Vicious Drunken Footman must Reform or Starve he would get no Service a Servant once turn'd away for his Intemperance would be entertain'd by no body else a Swearing Debauch'd Labourer or Workman must Reform or no body would Employ him the Drunken whoring Shopkeeper must grow Sober or lose all his Customers and be Undone Interest and good Manners would Reform us of the poorer sort there would be no need of the Stocks or Houses of Correction we should be sober of course because we should be all Beggars else and he that lov'd his Vice so dearly as to purchase it with the loss of his Trade or Employment would soon grow too poor for his Vice and be forced to leave it by his own Necessities there would be no need of Informers a Vicious Fellow would be presently Notorious he would be the Talk of the Town every one would slight and shun him for fear of being thought like him by being seen in his Company he would expose himself and would be punish'd as unpitied as a Thief So that in short the whole Weight of this Blessed Work of Reformation lies on the shoulders of the Gentry they are the Cause of our Defection which being taken away the Effect would cease of course Vice would grow Scandalous and all Mankind would be asham'd of it 2. The Clergy also ought not to count themselves exempted in this matter whose Lives have been and in some places still are so Vicious and so loose that 't is well for England we are not subject to be much Priest-ridden 'T is a strange thing how it shou'd be otherwise than it is with us the poor Commonalty when the Gentry our Patern and the Clergy our Teachers are as Immoral as we And then to consider the Coherence of the thing the Parson preaches a thundering Sermon against Drunkenness and the Iustice of Peace sets my poor Neighbour in the Stocks and I am like to be much the better for either when I know perhaps that this same Parson and this same Iustice were both Drunk together but the Night before It may be true for ought we know that a Wicked Parson may make a good Sermon and the Spanish Proverb may be true of the Soul as well as the Body If the Cure be but wrought let the Devil be the Doctor but this does not take with the downright ignorant People in the Country a poor Man gets Drunk in a Country Ale house Why are you not asham'd to be such a Beast says a good honest Neighbour to him the next day Asham'd says the Fellow Why should I be asham'd Why there was Sir Iohn and Sir Robert and the Parson and they were all as Drunk as I. And why a Beast Pray I heard Sir Robert say That He that Drinks least Drinks most like a Beast A Vicious Parson that preaches well but lives ill may be like an unskilful Horseman who opens a Gate on the wrong side and lets other Folks through but shuts himself out This may be possible but it seems most reasonable to think they are a means by that sort of living to hinder both themselves and others and would the Gentry and Clergy of England but look back a little on the Guilt that really lies on them as Gentlemen by whose Example so great a part of Mankind has been led into and encouraged in the Progress of Vice they would find Matter of very serious reflection This Article of the Clergy may seem to lie in the power of their Superiors to rectify and therefore may be something more feasible than the other but the Gentry who are Sui juris can no way be reduced but by their own voluntary practice We are in England exceedingly govern'd by Modes and Customs The Gentry may effectually Suppress Vice would they but put it out of Fashion but to Suppress it by Force seems impossible The Application of this rough Doctrine is in short both to the Gentry and Clergy Physicians Heal your selves if you will leave off your Drunkenness and Lewdness first if we do not follow you then set us in the Stocks and send us to the House of Correction and punish us as you please if you will leave off Whoring first then Brand us in the Foreheads or Transport or Hang us for Fornication or Adultery and you are welcome but to preach against Drunkenness immediately after an Evening's Debauch to Correct a poor Fellow for Swearing with the very Vice in your Mouths these are the unjustest ways in the World and have in themselves no manner of tendency towards the Reformation of Manners which is the true Design of the Law 'T is acknowledge'd there are in England a great many Sober Pious Religious Persons both among the Gentry and Clergy and 't is hoped such cannot think themselves Libell'd or Injur'd in this Plea if there were not Laws would never have been made against those Vices for no men make Laws to punish themselves 't is design'd to reflect upon none but such as are Guilty and on them no farther than to put them in mind how much the Nation owes its present Degeneracy to their folly and how much it is in their power to Reform it again by their Example that the King may not publish Proclamations nor the Parliament make Laws to no purpose but that we might live in England once more like Christians and like Gentlemen to the Glory of God and the Honour of the present King and Parliament who so publickly have attempted the great Work of Reformation among us though hitherto to so little purpose FINIS