So far we understand that London about the year 1750 was a city filled with dignified merchants all getting rich, and with a decorous, self-respecting population of retail traders, clerks, craftsmen, and servants of all kinds, a noisy but a well-behaved people. A church-going, sermon-loving, and orderly people.

This is in the main a fair and just appreciation of the City. But there is the other side which must not be overlooked—that side, namely, which presents the vice and sin and misery which always accompany the congregation of many people and the accumulation of wealth.

The vice which has always been the father of most miseries is that of drink. In the middle of the last century, everybody drank too much. The dignity of the grave merchant was too often marred by indulgence in port and punch: the City clergy drank too much: even the ladies drank too much: it was hardly a reproach, in any class, to be overcome with liquor. As for the lower classes their habitual drink was beer—Franklin tells us that when he was a printer in London every man drank seven or eight pints of beer every day: nor was this small ale or porter: it was generally good strong beer: the beer would not perhaps hurt them so much—though the money spent on drink was enormous—but unfortunately they had now taken to gin as well—or instead. The drinking of gin at one time threatened, literally, to destroy the whole of the working classes of London. There were 10,000 houses—one in four—where gin was sold either secretly or openly. It was advertised that a man could get drunk for a penny and dead drunk for twopence. A check was placed upon this habit by imposing a tax of 5s. on every gallon of gin. This was in the year 1735 and in 1750 about 1,700 gin shops were closed. Since then the continual efforts made to stop the pernicious habit of dram drinking have greatly reduced the evil. But it was not only the drinking of gin: there was also the rum punch which formed so large a part in the life of the Georgian citizen. Every man had his club to which he resorted in the evening after the day's work. Here he sat and for the most part drank what he called a sober glass: that is to say, he did not go home drunk, but he drank every night more than was good for him. The results were the transmission of gout and other disorders to his children. It should be, indeed, a most serious thing to reflect that in every evil habit we are bringing misery and suffering upon our children as well as ourselves. The habits of drinking showed themselves externally in a bloated body; puffed and red cheeks; a large and swollen nose; trembling hands; fat lips and bleared eyes: in the case of gin drinkers it showed itself in a face literally blue. It is said that King George the Third was persuaded to a temperate life—in a time of universal intemperance, this King remained always temperate—by the example of his uncle the Duke of Cumberland, who at the age of forty-five in consequence of his excesses in drink exhibited a body swollen and bloated and tortured with disease.

If you look at a map of London of this time you will see that the city extended a long way up and down the river on either bank. Outside the walls there were the crowded districts of Whitechapel, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, St. Katherine's, Wapping, Ratcliff, Shadwell, Stepney, and others. These places were not only outside the wards and the jurisdiction of the City, but they were outside any government whatever. They were growing up in some parts without schools, churches, or any rule, order, or discipline whatever. The people in many of these quarters were of the working classes, but too often of the criminal class. They were rude and rough and ignorant to an extraordinary degree. How could they be anything else, living as they did? They were so unruly, they were so numerous, they were so ready to break out, that they became a danger to the very existence of Order and Government. They were kept in some kind of order by the greatest severity of punishment. They were hanged for what we now call light offences: they were kept half starved in foul and filthy prisons: and they were mercilessly flogged. In the army it was not unknown for a man to receive 500 lashes: in the navy they were always flogging the men. Horrible as it is to read of these punishments we must remember that the men who received them were brutal and dead to any other kind of persuasion. Drink and ignorance and habitual vice had killed the sense of shame and stilled the voice of conscience. The only thing they would feel was the pain of the whip.