James Peller Malcolm

“ This day will be ever remembered by them with the highest satisfaction: this happy day, which gave birth to their most gracious King, who is pleased thus to honour them, and who protects them in the enjoyment of all their rights and privileges: a Prince who takes pleasure in promoting their happiness, and who thinks it gives the truest lustre to his Crown, to preserve the religion, the laws, and liberties of his people. ”

“ See the consequences in the myriads of beautiful infants that smile on every side of him, with the regular and placid lines that mark their faces, and the strait and truly proportioned limbs that distinguish vast numbers of all ranks of people of both sexes.
Still the deformed and pallid are numerous; but deformity and disease in London generally proceed from causes which may be prevented; very confined residences destroy the health of parents and their offspring; the lowest class of inhabitants drink away their comforts, and suffer their children to crawl into manhood. ”

“ The writer has been much my friend in this instance, though certainly without intending it; for he could not have more effectually convinced the publick of his incapability. Can he suppose it possible that, in describing the Manners of the Metropolis, the eccentricities of its inhabitants should be omitted? It is as impossible as that any person should agree with him in all his absurdities. As to exciting of interest, the very nature of eccentricity is such, that pity alone must predominate in the breast of the considerate reader. ”

“ ANECDOTES OF DEPRAVITY, FROM 1700 TO 1800. Mankind may be universally divided into two classes, the honest and dishonest; for I admit of no medium. That those distinctions have existed from the very remotest periods, I believe no one will deny; therefore it is perfectly natural to suppose, that depraved and idle wretches, who would rather steal the effects of another than labour to acquire property for themselves, have infested London, from the hour in which an hundred persons inhabited it in huts or caverns. ”

“ His genius appears in the variety of his suits, and his generosity in his taylor's bills; his delicacy in not so much as bearing a breath of wind to blow on him, and his innocency in being seen with ladies at all hours, and never once suspected of doing an uncivil thing. When he is dressed, the business of the day is over; when he is undressed, he grows invisible, for his clothes are all that is seen of him ”

“ If ever a government paid its debts without money, and exchanged all the cash in the kingdom for bits of paper, which had neither anybody to pay them for, or any intrinsic fund to pay themselves, this is the time. If ever a credit was raised without a foundation, and built up to a height that not only was likely to fall, but indeed was impossible to stand, this is the time. ”

“ In collecting materials for this portion of my review of London, order and regularity are unnecessary; cheats, impostors, knaves, and thieves, members of one great family, will be indiscriminately introduced, with their schemes and crimes to mark them, and the cullibility of the good Citizens of London, a large portion of whom are ever ready to catch at the most silly and absurd baits, provided they happen to agree with their pursuits. ”

“ When such wants are supplied by the tradesman before the hour of Divine service, he must be a rigid moralist indeed who would prosecute the offender. If persons in opulent circumstances were in the practice of purchasing on Sundays, it could be attributed to no other cause than mere indolence in themselves and servants, and they would deserve punishment; but I cannot help thinking a grocer or chandler would find very little account from opening his shop for such, as I do not believe there are five in each parish throughout London. For the pastry-cooks and publicans I have no excuse. ”

“ Amongst the people of London we should properly distinguish the Porters, Sailors, Chairmen, and the Day-labourers who work in the streets, not only from persons of condition, most of whom walk a-foot merely because it is their fancy, but even from the lowest class of shopkeepers. ”

“ And in order that it may be discharged with a conscientious regard to truth, and a fidelity becoming its importance, you are bound by the solemn tie of an oath to execute this office without malice, without resentment, without favour, and without affection. Under this sacred obligation, your fellow-subjects have reason to hope and expect that you will hear with patience, enquire with diligence, judge with candour, and present with impartiality. ”

“ O my fellow-citizens, we have waged a civil war throughout the land; who hath not committed hostilities against his neighbour, and what hath it profited? The wealth, the inheritance of the Island, are transferred to the meanest of the people; those chiefly have gained who had nothing to lose: the nobility, the gentry, the merchants, have been a prey to the idle, the licentious, the spendthrifts; men whose habitations were not known. ”

“ But, what is still more shocking, I am informed [213] that women, nay mothers of families, to the disgrace of their sex, are the cruel dispensers of this high-seasoned mischief; but, if duty or humanity should spirit up any one to prosecute such offenders, I conjure you as fathers, masters, and subjects, to afford them the best assistance in your power, to put a stop to this shameful and abominable practice. ”

“ It is the observation of a moral writer of eminence, 'That there is some degree of virtue in a man's keeping his vices to himself:' for, as [354] example is allowed to be more efficacious than precept in recommendation of virtue, where men act as it were in opposition to the depravity of human nature, how must the open and public example of lewdness draw men into the tide of wickedness, when their own passions and inclinations serve as winds to carry them down the stream! Men like these deserve punishment as public as their crimes. ”

“ He could wish to see Butchers' boys, who gallop through the streets of London, punished for so doing, or at least their horses seized for the use of the poor of the parish in which they so offend; for, though a poor man's life may not be worth preserving, his limbs may be of use to him while he crawls upon earth. ”

“ I am told, that while wagers were allowed to be made on taking of towns, and gaining of battles, during the last war, this Exchange-alley was the sharpest place in the World; but the abuse of intelligence, sham letters spread upon the Exchange, and private letters coming before the Mails, made that practice so notorious, that the Queen and Parliament wisely thought fit to put a stop to it by a seasonable provisional Act against it, as they have endeavoured to do by another Act against excessive gaming, being both equally looked on as a cheat and imposition upon the well-meaning subject. ”

“ It is well known that the passions of human nature require the utmost coercion, even in families of undoubted honour and virtue: is it then prudent, much less wise, to send apprentices, youth from schools, girls the offspring of the lower classes, and servants, into these regular scenes of riot and systematic violations of order and decency, where customs must be acquired which will not bear repetition? ”

“ In the mean time let us mutually bear with, and assist one another in our present necessities: and since we are as free, though not so rich, a people as we have been; and still claim, as our birthright, the liberty to debate, to speak, to write manfully for the public good; let us not be dejected like our neighbours, after whose inventions we have gone astray, not sorrow, even as others who have no hope. ”

“ Sir John Fielding being again examined, said, that ballad-singers are a greater nuisance than beggars, because they give opportunity to pick-pockets by collecting people together; that the songs they sing are generally immoral and obscene; the people themselves capable of work, and of the lowest and most abandoned order of people; for remedy of which, he proposed that all ballad-singers should be considered as vagrants, and made liable to the same punishments, no person being a vagrant now but who comes within some one of the descriptions of vagrancy in the Vagrant Act. ”

“ He that eats bread without butter or meat, throughout London, at the present moment, and afterwards visits a friend in the country who makes his own, cannot fail of perceiving the delicious sweetness which the mercy of our Creator hath diffused through the invaluable grain that produces it; the inducement held out to us, to preserve life by the most innocent means, is thus in a great measure lost to the inhabitants of London. I once broke a piece of alum with my teeth, which lay in the depth of a slice of bread, when at breakfast, as large as a pea ”

“ Indeed, by care, you may prevent youth in some degree from frequenting bad company; you may accustom them to good habits, afford them examples worthy imitation, and by shutting your doors early, may oblige them to keep good hours; but, alas! what doors, what bolts, what bars, can be any security to their innocence, whilst Vice in this deluding form counteracts all caution, and bids defiance to the force of precept, prudence, and example, by affording such foul but palatable hints as are destructive to modesty, sobriety, and obedience? ”

“ Some people, unacquainted with this fellow-feeling at Taverns, often wonder how such-a-one does to hold it; that he spends a confounded deal of money, is seldom out of a Tavern, and never in his business: when, in reality, he is thus never out of his business, and so helps to run away with the chief profits of the house. ”

“ The former Inhabitants were so convinced of the reasonableness, the propriety, the expediency, and necessity of the daily prayers, that they thought it just and fitting to make an extraordinary allowance for this extraordinary duty, and entered into a voluntary annual subscription for this purpose, which contributions have in some measure been continued from the first building and opening of your church till within these few years. And will you, Gentlemen, suffer so good a work, which hath been carried on so many years, to perish in your hands? ”

“ Incomparable perfuming drops for handkerchiefs, and all other linen, clothes, gloves, &c. being the most excellent for that purpose in the Universe; for they stain nothing that is perfumed with them any more than fair water; but are the most delectable, fragrant, and odoriferous perfume in nature, good against all diseases of the head and brain. By their delicious smell, they comfort, revive, and refresh all the senses, natural, vital, and animal, enliven the spirits, cheer the heart, and drive away melancholy ”

“ After the establishment of Christianity, flocks of Christians determined to devote themselves to the service of the Lord in their way, and work no more; such were some orders of Monks and Friars mendicants! The monasteries afterwards, acting upon a mistaken idea of charity, gave alms, and fed the poor and idle indiscriminately at their gates: thus a wretch might invigorate his body with the viands of the Abbots and Monks in the day, and pass the night in attacks upon the defenceless traveller, perhaps often relieved in presence of the depredator by the blind religious. ”

“ Their intolerable behaviour has rendered them so contemptible and odious in the eyes of all degrees of people whatever, that there is more joy seen for one Hackney-coachman's going to the gallows, than for a dozen highwaymen and street-robbers. ”

“ Card-money, or money deposited under the candlesticks for the servants where card-parties were held, deserved less reprehension, as it was in every one's power to avoid gaming; but when a man in moderate circumstances was insulted for not giving that which was necessary for his own existence, or was compelled to decline an invitation to his injury, we cannot but wonder that such a custom should have prevailed for a year, much less a Century or more. It was meanness in the master to suffer such an exaction, and folly to comply with it when himself a visitor. ”

“ Worthy and enviable pursuit, to wound the feelings of a man we never saw, and rob him not only of fame, but of that remuneration which the risk of his property in some degree demands from the publick he endeavours to please!
When an author so far forgets his moral obligations as to publish to the world sentiments or narratives dangerous to the beautiful order and simplicity of social life, it becomes the province of a Reviewer to expose his intentions, and lash him into a sense of his duty ”

“ The business of the place is to promote some musical subscription; to make all possible court to some young man of quality that is next expected to take possession of a great estate; to take care to be very well with a knot of well-dressed people that meet here, and modestly call themselves the world; but, above all, to solicit a share in the direction of the moneyed interest, which is established here under the name of a Faro Bank. ”

“ What does he say to the Spectator, the Tatler, the World, the Rambler, the Guardian, the Observator, the Female Tatler? Were they not periodical publications? Do they abound in "shameful lies" (the gross words of the Reviewer) ? or are they not considered as faithful sketches of those customs which escape the notice of the Historian?
Every Newspaper may contain misrepresentations and falsehoods; but those are generally confined to politics and artifices of trade: when any indifferent circumstance is to be related, there is no inducement to wilful falsehood. ”

“ One of the most wicked impositions practised by knaves in London, is the adulteration of [174] Bread. The wretch who improves his circumstances by this detestable method of increasing his profits, is an assassin, full as wicked as the celebrated Italian Tophana: that human fiend poisoned her victims by degrees, suited to the malice of her employers; the Baker who throws slow poisons into his trough does worse, for he undermines the constitutions of his supporters, his customers. ”

“ The ridiculous falsehoods of Quacks have long been detested by the sensible part of the Community; but every thing that has been said and written against them avails nothing: thousands of silly people are yet duped, nay, are bigoted in their belief of the efficacy of nostrums. Be it my task to shew the reader a few of the contrivances and schemes of a Century, and to bring before him genuine effusions of impudence which have daily insulted and deceived the inhabitants of London. ”

“ The reader will forgive me, if I at once proceed to notice this hateful custom of Boxing in its present state; he need not be informed that it has been encouraged by persons of the highest rank, who have been and are now known to disgrace their situation in life, by witnessing the infliction of blows which sometimes produce death, and always disfigure the human form, for the avaricious purpose of betting on either party, to the injury at least of their fortunes. ”

“ At Tom's Coffee-house, in Cornhill, there is a very different face of things. Plenty, the parent of Cheerfulness, seems to have fixed her residence on this spot; while Joy, which is the offspring of Folly, seems to be utterly unknown. Industry, the first principle of a Citizen, is an infallible specifick to keep the spirits awake, and prevent that stagnation and corruption of humours which make our fine gentlemen such horrible torments to one another and to themselves. ”