But the result of the prosecutions was such that the good people, working in this way, regarded themselves as very successful. Seventy or eighty warrants a week were executed upon street swearers, so that the constables “found it difficult to take up a swearer in divers of our streets.” Sunday markets ceased; drovers and carriers were stopped; bakers did not dare to appear with their baskets, or “barbers with their pot, basin, or periwig-box;” hundreds of bad houses became closed; and “thousands of lewd persons were imprisoned, fined, and whipped, and the Tower end of the town much purged from that pestilential generation of night-walkers, forty or fifty of them being sent in a week to Bridewell, from whence, at their own desire, they were transported to America, to gain an honest livelihood in the plantations.” [Sidenote: RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.] Means of another and an unexceptionable nature were employed for the furtherance of the general object. The distribution of tracts--now become so conspicuous and powerful an agency--was then systematically commenced, and we notice in the scanty but gradually increasing list, _Kind Caution to Profane Swearers_ and _The Soldier’s Monitor_, the last of these publications indicating the interest taken in the spiritual welfare of the army. A hundred thousand short tracts against drunkenness and other vices were distributed throughout the country, and we meet with the statement that especial care was taken to present them to culprits after their conviction. Connected with this enterprise appears the germ of another usage, exceedingly popular in our own times--the preaching of sermons on particular occasions in behalf of societies. Episcopal clergymen advocated them from the pulpit of Bow Church, Nonconforming ministers from the pulpit of Salter’s Hall. With eloquence, or with varying degrees in the want of it; with spirit, or with dulness; with a pleasant voice, as of one who can play well on an instrument, or with an unmusical delivery, which grated harshly on sensitive ears,--did these divines stand up before congregations, crowded or scanty, charmed or disappointed, enthusiastic or critical; after which a collection was made, yielding a goodly amount of gold and silver, or the reverse. Then, as now, secretaries would be filled with anxiety, committees would listen with a feeling of responsibility, praises and censures would follow the appeals, complacency would be inspired, mortification would be provoked, thanks would be returned; and the good and evil, the grace and the frailty, the virtues and the infirmities incident to such occasions would begin to manifest themselves on a small scale, in prophetic type of what obtains in the May anniversaries of the nineteenth century.