sedition, and reforming the state, set up for the reformation of the stage. The event was admirable, fanaticks presented the nonjuror, and misers and extortioners gave him bountiful rewards: one grave citizen, that had found the character too often on the stage, and famous for the ruin of some hundreds of poor under-tradesmen’s families, laid out threescore pounds in the impression, to distribute among the saints, that are zealous for God and mammon at the same time: Bullies and republicans quarrell’d for the _passive obedience_ spark; grave divines extoll’d his wit, and atheists his religion; the fanaticks his honesty, the hypocrite his zeal, and the ladies were of his side, because he was _for submitting to force_. There is yet a greater mischief befall’n the stage; here are societies set up for _reformation of manners_; troops of _informers_, who are maintain’d by perjury, serve God for gain, and ferret out whores for subsistence. This noble society consists of divines of both churches, fanatick as well as orthodox saints and sinners, knights of the post, and knights of the elbow, and they are not more unanimous against immorality in their informations, than for it in their practice; they avoid no sins in themselves, and will suffer none in any one else. The fanaticks, that never preached up morality in their pulpits, or knew it in their dealings, would seem to promote it in the ungodly. The churchmen, that would enjoy the pleasure of sinners, and the reputation of saints, are for punishing whores and drinking in all but themselves. In short, the motive that carries the Popish apostles to the richer continents, makes these gentlemen so busy in our reformation money. Nay, reformation is grown a staple commodity, and the dealers in it are suddenly to be made into a corporation, and their privileges peculiar are to be perjury without punishment, and lying with impunity. The whores have a tax laid on them towards their maintenance, in which they share with captain _W_----, and the justices of the peace; for _New-Prison_ knows them in all their turns, and twenty or thirty shillings gives them a license for whoring, till next pay-day; so that the effect of their punishment only raising the price of the sin, and the vices of the nation maintain the informers. Drinking, swearing and whoring are the manufactures they deal in; for should they stretch their zeal to _cozening, cheating, injury, extortion, oppression, defamation, secret adulteries, and fornication_, and a thousand other of these more crying immoralities, the city would rise against these invaders of their liberties, and the cuckolds one and all, for their own and their wives sakes, rise against the reformers. These worthy gentlemen, for promoting the interest of the _Crown Office_, and some such honest place, pick harmless words out of plays, to indict the players and squeeze twenty pound a week out of them, if they can, for their exposing pride, vanity,