Such being the state of the court, coarse sensuality brought along
with it its ordinary companion, a brutal degree of undisguised
selfishness, destructive alike of philanthropy and good breeding; both
of which, in their several spheres, depend upon the regard paid by
each individual to the interest as well as the feelings of others. It
is in such a time that the heartless and shameless man of wealth and
power may, like the supposed Lord Dalgarno, brazen out the shame of
his villainies, and affect to triumph in their consequences, so long
as they were personally advantageous to his own pleasures or profit.

Alsatia is elsewhere explained as a cant name for Whitefriars, which,
possessing certain privileges of sanctuary, became for that reason a
nest of those mischievous characters who were generally obnoxious to
the law. These privileges were derived from its having been an
establishment of the Carmelites, or White Friars, founded says Stow,
in his Survey of London, by Sir Patrick Grey, in 1241. Edward I. gave
them a plot of ground in Fleet Street, to build their church upon. The
edifice then erected was rebuilt by Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, in
the reign of Edward. In the time of the Reformation the place retained
its immunities as a sanctuary, and James I. confirmed and added to
them by a charter in 1608. Shadwell was the first author who made some
literary use of Whitefriars, in his play of the Squire of Alsatia,
which turns upon the plot of the Adelphi of Terence.

In this old play, two men of fortune, brothers, educate two young men,
(sons to the one and nephews to the other,) each under his own
separate system of rigour and indulgence. The elder of the subjects of
this experiment, who has been very rigidly brought up, falls at once
into all the vices of the town, is debauched by the cheats and bullies