A spunging-house, in its present state, is as destructive to the principles of a man, as a brothel to the chastity of a woman; both enter with an equal degree of timidity and terror, and are seduced by similar stages of viciousness. The former, who held it a dishonour to delay payment of his bill with punctuality, will, after a month’s residence in a spunging-house, from hellish tenets and execrable examples, think it meritorious to cheat every creditor he has. The latter, who held the least obscenity offensive to her ear, will, from a like mode of seduction, and abominable examples, not only endure the sound, but court the substance. Most certain it is, that the seeds of vice are alike plentifully sown in these diabolical seminaries, and the hand of authority only can prevent its increase. But it appears, that these abuses committed by sheriffs officers are not wholly recent or local; for so long since as the year 1413 we find an act, in the first year of Henry the Fifth, to prevent abuses, extortions, and oppressions of bailiffs; which act runs thus: “Forasmuch as the king’s liege people dare not prosecute or complain of the extortions or oppressions to them done by the _bailiffs_ of sheriffs, because that the said bailiffs of sheriffs be so continually year after year abiding with the sheriffs, interchangeably in one office or in another, our lord the king, by the advice and assent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and at the _special_ instance and _special_ request of the commons of this realm, hath ordained and established, THAT THEY WHO BE BAILIFFS OR SHERIFFS BY ONE YEAR SHALL BE IN NO SUCH OFFICE BY THREE YEARS NEXT FOLLOWING.” But by this and a subsequent act the bailiffs of such sheriffs, whose sheriffwicks are _inheritable_, are excepted. Now the lord mayor and citizens of London have the sheriffalty of London and Middlesex in fee by charter; therefore the bailiffs come within the above exception. The acts themselves are affirmative, and the exception consequently leaves a negative pregnant, which gives the sheriff full power to discharge such bailiffs under sheriffwicks _inheritable_, as if the acts had made no exceptions.