them before the magistrates.” A fourth rank of men, described as the corner-stone of the undertaking, contained as many as were disposed to inform against delinquents; the money arising from informations being devoted to the help of the poor, except a third part of the penalty against Sabbath-breaking, which the magistrate had the power to distribute, but which had never, so it was said, been bestowed upon the informers themselves. [Sidenote: RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.] The necessity of laws for the punishment of offences against society and individual rights is plain, but the efficacy of legislation for the suppression of immorality and irreligion is more than questioned. Fines and imprisonments can only produce a skin-deep reformation, and when relaxed are followed by fresh outbursts of vicious indulgence; and if the least objectionable part of the plan now under review was defective, the encouragement given to informers was adapted to produce bad results, only second to those which were assailed. To stir up people to lay informations against their neighbours, must breed mutual suspicion; and with the honest intention of destroying one evil, provoke another into fiercer rage. The laws against drunkenness, houses of ill-fame, and gambling, were wise and good, and deserved to be put in force; but the laws against some kinds of conduct, called Sabbath-breaking, and profaneness, and blasphemy, were of a different class and of a doubtful character. Blasphemy included the denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, so that any honest and upright Socinian came under the scourge, it being sophistically added as a note at the bottom of the published abstract, “This statute punishes not the error, but the impudence of the offender.” It should be stated further, that over the enforcement of the law against immorality and irreligion an even-handed justice did not preside. The bandage sometimes fell from the eyes of that impartial lady. The cases of rich and poor, of high and low, were not always weighed in the same scales. The crusade against sinners in the valleys and low lands of social life was most vigorously carried on; the sinners on the hills were left to do very much as they liked. De Foe exposed this kind of double-dealing.