Extravagance was the order of the day. Scarcely one family in ten kept within its income. The grand controversy then, as now, was, who should _out-dress_, _out-drink_, or _out-eat_ his neighbour. Citizens and young tradesmen, whose ancestors would have fainted at the sight of drawing-rooms, were the chief visitors at plays and masquerades; and even shopkeepers were seen wearing long wigs and swords, velvet breeches and hunting caps. Families, who were oftentimes resolved into committees on ways and means to pay a butcher’s bill, paraded themselves in attire the most pompous, and adorned with the richest brocades and jewels. London swarmed with ruined rakes and broken traders, who contrived to live in the best society by reciting scraps of poetry, singing licentious songs, and retailing drunken puns and quibbles. In fact, all ranks and classes seemed to be corrupted to the core. “A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers; children that are corrupters; the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint; from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds, bruises, and putrifying sores.” What was done to improve this state of things? From a report of the charity schools, we learn that, in 1715, there were, throughout the kingdom, 1193 schools for the education of the children of the poor, containing 26,920 scholars. In other words, and to say nothing of other churches, there are at present in the Wesleyan-Methodist day-schools of England four times more scholars than there were in all the schools for primary education throughout the kingdom in 1715. Turning from schools to churches, there is no amelioration of the dark picture. The Church, which ought to have reformed the nation, needed to be reformed itself. The Dissenters complained of their ministers conforming to the Establishment, but comforted themselves with thinking that the apostates were mainly young fops and dandies. The three Dissenting denominations, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, considered themselves the great barriers to the doctrine of passive obedience to the crown, and of submission to the priestly encroachments of the Church. They maintained that they had greatly contributed to the interests of the Protestant succession, and had promoted a better observance of the sabbath, and the more frequent preaching of the high church clergy; but still they lamented that numbers of their ministers were immoral, negligent, and insufficient; that they devoted too much time to the fashionable study of the classics, and read their sermons instead of preaching them. They also complained of their children being sent to high church schools, and of the artful caballing of their congregations in appointing ministers to vacant pastorates. (See “Observations upon the Present State of the Dissenting Interest.” London: 1731.)