was so last night, with as little ceremony or scruple, as he would tell
you the time of the day. He will let you know he is going to a whore, or
that he has got a clap, with as much indifferency, as he would a piece
of public news. He will swear, curse, or blaspheme, without the least
passion or provocation. And, though all regard for reputation is not
quite laid aside in the other sex, 'tis, however, at so low an ebb, that
very few among them seem to think virtue and conduct of absolute
necessity for preserving it. If this be not so, how comes it to pass,
that women of tainted reputations find the same countenance and
reception in all public places, with those of the nicest virtue, who
pay, and receive visits from them without any manner of scruple? which
proceeding, as it is not very old among us, so I take it to be of most
pernicious consequence: It looks like a sort of compounding between
virtue and vice, as if a woman were allowed to be vicious, provided she
be not a profligate; as if there were a certain point, where gallantry
ends, and infamy begins, or that a hundred criminal amours were not as
pardonable as half a score.

Besides those corruptions already mentioned, it would be endless to
enumerate such as arise from the excess of play or gaming: The cheats,
the quarrels, the oaths and blasphemies among the men; among the women,
the neglect of household affairs, the unlimited freedoms, the indecent
passion; and lastly, the known inlet to all lewdness, when after an ill
run, the person must answer the defects of the purse; the rule on such
occasions holding true in play as it does in law; _quod non habet in
crumena, luat in corpore._

But all these are trifles in comparison, if we step into other scenes,
and consider the fraud and cozenage of trading men and shopkeepers; that
insatiable gulf of injustice and oppression, the law. The open traffic