There are thirty-six public-houses in Old-street between Goswell-street and the City-road. Can they be supported by the population of that neighbourhood without endless excesses? And there are other districts where those curses to society are equally numerous? Shame on our thoughtless conduct in permitting a trade calculated only for human destruction! If comfort, health, and pleasure can arise from quaffing gallons of beer, let the lower classes be compelled to drink it at home with their friends and families; and no longer suffer that promiscuous mixture of folly and vice which results from thieves drinking with honest men. It is from this cause alone that men are brutalized. Difference of opinion will arise between members of the most polished classes: those become quarrels in the lower; and hence the petty actions for assaults which are tried in every direction. Examine the Old Bailey causes; and if Public-houses and Dram-shops are not found to be the general theatres of thieving plots and murders, let me receive no farther credit. London and the environs are overwhelmed with population. Every description of the inhabitants of the Country watch for favourable opportunities of removing to this enormous magnet; or, if that cannot be accomplished, they send their offspring of both sexes. Hundreds of servant girls and apprentices are thus prepared annually for prostitution and thoughtless marriages; every room in numbers of streets becomes the residence of Apprentices, Journeymen, their wives, and multitudes of children, who starve away existence year after year in hopeless sameness, and are often separated from Vice only by a deal or lath and plaster partition. The consequences of this crowded state of the City are so well known, that it is hardly necessary to point them out. I shall however venture to direct the Reader's attention to the Alms-houses, Work-houses, Charity Schools, Hospitals, and Prisons, which surround us; and ask whence they are filled? Who turns his attention to the second-floors, the garrets, the back-rooms, and the cellars of this Metropolis? It would be wrong to say no one; but who relates the result of his research? It may be imagined Hogarth has given us a true picture in his Distressed Poet: that print may serve as a foundation; a few additions of the _sombre_ cast would furnish thousands of real scenes.