Daniel Defoe

“ It is the bane of all conversation; and those who can't sit an hour without gaming, should never go into a club to spoil company. In a word, it is mere madness, and a most stupid thing to hazard one's fortune, and perplex one's mind; nay, to sit up whole nights, poring over toys of pipped ivory and painted pasteboard, making ourselves worse than little children, whose innocent sports we so much ridicule. ”

“ What benefits may we not in time expect from so glorious a design? Will not London become the scene of science? And what reason have we but to hope we may vie with any [Pg 5] neighbouring nations? Not that I would have Oxford or Cambridge neglected, for the good they have done. Besides, there are too many fine endowments to be sunk; we may have universities at those places and at London too, without prejudice. Knowledge will never hurt us, and whoever lives to see an university here, will find it give quite another turn to the genius and spirit of our youth in general. ”

“ Shame, that gentlemen should suffer every scoundrel to mix with them for gaming sake! And equal shame, that honest laborious tradesmen should be obstructed in crossing the public streets, by the gilt chariots of vagabond gamesters; who now infest the land, and brave even our nobility and gentry with their own money. ”

“ I see no reason why every profligate fellow shall have the liberty to disturb a whole neighbourhood, and abuse a poor honest creature at a most inhuman rate, and is not to be called to account because it is his wife; this sort of barbarity was never so notorious and so much encouraged as at present, for every vagabond thinks he may cripple his wife at pleasure; and it is enough to pierce a heart of stone to see how barbarously some poor creatures are beaten and abused by merciless dogs of husbands. ”

“ People stumble more upon one another, even under these very lamps, than in the dark. In short, they are most unprofitable lights, and in my opinion, rather abuses than benefits.
Besides, I see no reason why every ten housekeepers cannot find a lamp among themselves, and let their watchman dress it, rather than fatten a crew of directors; but we are so fond of companies, it is a wonder we have not our shoes blacked by one, and a set of directors made rich at the expense of our very black-guards. ”

“ In short, the luxury of the age will be the ruin of the nation, if not prevented. We leave trade to game in stocks; we live above ourselves, and barter our ready money for trifles; tea and wine are all we seem anxious for, and God has given the blessings of life to an ungrateful people, who despise their own productions. ”

“ Nay, it is murder upon murder, for the issue that might have been begot is to be accounted for to God and the public. Now, if this kind of murder is connived at, we shall no doubt have enough, nay, too much of it; for if a man is weary of his wife, has spent her fortune, and wants another, it is but sending her to a madhouse and the business is done at once. ”

“ How many, I say, of beauty, virtue, and fortune, are suddenly torn from their dear innocent babes, from the arms of an unworthy man, whom they love, perhaps, but too well, and who in return for that love, nay probably an ample fortune and a lovely offspring besides, grows weary of the pure streams of chaste love, and thirsting after the puddles of lawless lust, buries his virtuous wife alive, that he may have the greater freedom with his mistresses? ”

“ Thus is God robbed of a creature, in whom he had breathed the breath of life, and on whom he had stamped his image; the world of an inhabitant, who might have been of use; the king of a subject; and future generations of an issue not to be accounted for, had this infant lived to have been a parent. ”

“ While we want servants to do our work, those hundreds, as they call them, are crowded with numbers of idle impudent sluts, who love sporting more than spinning, and inveigle our youth to their ruin; nay, many old lechers, beasts as they are! steal from their families, and seek these harlots' lurking holes, to practise their unaccountable schemes of new invented lewdnesses; some half hang themselves, others are whipped, some lie under a table and gnaw the bones that are thrown them, while others stand slaving among a parcel of drabs at a washing tub. ”

“ OR, THE WAY TO MAKE LONDON THE MOST FLOURISHING City in the Universe
A man who has the public good in view, ought not in the least to be alarmed at the tribute of ridicule which scoffers constantly pay to projecting heads. It is the business of a writer, who means well, to go directly forward, without regard to criticism, but to offer his thoughts as they occur; and if in twenty schemes he hits but on one to the purpose, he ought to be excused failing in the nineteen for the twentieth sake. It is a kind of good action to mean well, and the intention ought to palliate the failure ”

“ All conveniences for writing are denied, no messenger to be had to carry a letter to any relation or friend; and if this tyrannical inquisition, joined with the reasonable reflections a woman of any common understanding must necessarily make, be not sufficient to drive any soul stark staring mad, though before they were never so much in their right senses, I have no more to say. ”

“ There ought to be a shorter way, and when a man has beaten his wife, which by the by is a most unmanly action, and great sign of cowardice, it behoves every neighbour who has the least humanity or compassion, to complain to the next justice of the peace, who should be empowered to set him in the stocks for the first offence; to have him well scourged at the whipping-post for the second; and if he persisted in his barbarous abuse of the holy marriage state, to send him to the house of correction till he should learn to use more mercy to his yoke-fellow. ”

“ But now, so far are our common people infatuated with Geneva, that half the work is not done now as formerly. It debilitates and enervates them, and they are not near so strong and healthy as formerly. This accursed liquor is in itself so diuretic, it overstrains the parts of generation, and makes our common people incapable of getting such lusty children as they used to do. ”

“ I think, in such cases it would be but justice to make void the gamester's debt, and subject his estate to make good the deficiencies of the bankrupt's effects. If traders have no more wit, the public should have pity on them; and make it as penal to lose as to win; and, in truth, if cards, dice, &c., were totally suppressed, industry and arts would increase the more; gaming may make a man crafty, but not polite; one may understand cards and dice perfectly well, and be a blockhead in everything else. ”

“ Nay, so little terror do our watchmen carry with them, that hardy thieves make a mere jest of them, and sometimes oblige even the very watchman who should apprehend them to light them in their roguery. And what can a poor creature do, in terror of his life, surrounded by a pack of ruffians, and no assistance near? ”

“ In a word, an academical education is so much wanted in London, that everybody of ability and figure will readily come into it; and I dare engage, the place need but be chosen, and tutors approved of, to complete the design at once.
It may be objected, that there is a kind of university at Gresham college, where professors in all sciences are maintained, and obliged to read lectures every day, or at least as often as demanded. The design is most laudable, but it smells too much of the sine cure ”

“ But then there ought to be some medium, some limitation to their wages, or they may extort more than can well be afforded.
Nothing calls for more redress than their quitting service for every idle disgust, leaving a master or mistress at a nonplus, and all under plea of a foolish old custom, called warning, nowhere practised but in London; for in other places they are hired by the year, or by the statute as they call it, which settles them in a place, at least for some time; whereas, when they are not limited, it encourages a roving temper, and makes them never easy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is it not enough to make any one mad to be suddenly clapped up, stripped, whipped, ill-fed, and worse used? To have no reason assigned for such treatment, no crime alleged, or accusers to confront? And what is worse, no soul to appeal to but merciless creatures, who answer but in laughter, surliness, contradiction, and too often stripes? ”

“ There is not in nature so unhealthy a liquor as Geneva, especially as commonly sold; it curdles the blood, it stupefies the senses, it weakens the nerves, it spoils the eyesight, and entirely ruins the stomach; nay, some stomachs have been rendered so cold by the use of Geneva, that lamp spirits have not been a dram warm enough for them. ”

“ Instead of a decent and cheerful solemnity, our taverns and publichouses have more business that day than all the week beside. Our apprentices plume themselves; nay, some scruple not to put on their swords and tie wigs, or toupees, and the loose end of the town is their rendezvous, Sunday being market-day all round the hundreds of Drury. ”

“ How hard is it for a poor industrious woman to be up early and late, to sit in a cold shop, stall, or market, all weathers, to carry heavy loads from one end of the town to the other, or to work from [Pg 22] morning till night, and even then dread going home for fear of being murdered? Some may think this too low a topic for me to expatiate upon, to which I answer, that it is a charitable and Christian one, and therefore not in the least beneath the consideration of any man who had a woman for his mother. ”

“ Of another, whose husband keeps his mistress in black velvet, and is seen with her every night at the opera or play, while his poor wife (by much the finer woman, and of an understanding far superior to her thick-skulled tyrant,) is kept mean in diet and apparel; nay, ill-used into the bargain, notwithstanding her fortune supplies all the villain's extravagances, and he has not a shilling but what came from her: but a beggar when once set on horseback proves always the most unmerciful rider. ”

“ To which I answer, that I am as much against bastards being begot, as I am for their being murdered; but when a child is once begot, it cannot be unbegotten; and when once born, it must be kept; the fault, as I said before, is in the parents, not the child; and we ought to show our charity towards it as a fellow-creature and Christian, without any regard to its legitimacy or otherwise.
The only way to put a stop to this growing evil, would be to oblige all housekeepers not to admit a man and woman as lodgers till they were certified of their being lawfully married ”

“ If you turn them away without warning, they will make you pay a month's wages, be the provocation or offence never so great; but if they leave you, though never so abruptly, or unprovided, help yourselves how you can, there is no redress; though I think there ought, in all conscience, to be as much law for the master as for the servant.
No servant should quit a place where they are [Pg 19] well fed and paid, without assigning a good reason before a magistrate. On the other hand, they should receive no abuse which should not be redressed; for we ought to treat them as servants, not slaves ”

“ I cannot forbear taking notice of the extravagant use, or rather abuse, of that nauseous liquor called Geneva, among our lower sort. Those who deny that an inferior class of people are most necessary in a body politic, contradict reason and experience itself, since they are most useful when industrious, and as pernicious when lazy. ”

“ In my humble opinion, all private madhouses should be suppressed at once, and it should be no less than felony to confine any person under pretence of madness without due authority.
For the cure of those who are really lunatic, licensed madhouses should be constituted in convenient parts of the town, which houses should be subject to proper visitation and inspection, nor should any person be sent to a madhouse without due reason, inquiry, and authority. ”

“ I wonder so many men of sense as have been on the jury have been so often imposed upon by the [Pg 8] stale pretence of a scrap or two of child-bed linen being found in the murderer's box, &c.; when, alas! perhaps, it was never put there till after the murder was committed; or if it was, but with a view of saving themselves by that devilish precaution; for so many have been acquitted on that pretence, that it is but too common a thing to provide child-bed linen beforehand for a poor innocent babe they are determined to murder. ”