oughbred
Liberal manufacturer, but only a half developed Tory bourgeois, and he
has, therefore, an open eye, now and then, where the full-fledged
bourgeois is still stone blind. Let us hear him: {120}

"It is in the great cities that vice has spread her temptations, and
pleasure her seductions, and folly her allurements; that guilt is
encouraged by the hope of impunity, and idleness fostered by the
frequency of example. It is to these great marts of human corruption
that the base and the profligate resort from the simplicity of country
life; it is here that they find victims whereon to practise their
iniquity, and gains to reward the dangers that attend them. Virtue is
here depressed from the obscurity in which it is involved. Guilt is
matured from the difficulty of its detection; licentiousness is
rewarded by the immediate enjoyment which it promises. If any person
will walk through St. Giles's, the crowded alleys of Dublin, or the
poorer quarters of Glasgow by night, he will meet with ample proof of
these observations; he will no longer wonder at the disorderly habits
and profligate enjoyments of the lower orders; his astonishment will
be, not that there is so much, but that there is so little crime in
the world. The great cause of human corruption in these crowded
situations is the contagious nature of bad example and the extreme
difficulty of avoiding the seductions of vice when they are brought
into close and daily proximity with the younger part of the people.
Whatever we may think of the strength of virtue, experience proves
that the higher orders are indebted for their exemption from atrocious
crime or disorderly habits chiefly to their fortunate removal from the
scene of temptation; and that where they are exposed to the seductions
which assail their inferiors, they are noways behind them in yielding
to their influence. It is the peculiar misfortune of the poor in
great cities that they cannot fly from these irresistible temptations,
but that, turn where they will, they are met by the alluring forms of
vice, or the seductions of guilty enjoyment. It is the experienced
impossibility of concealing the attractions of vice from the younger
part of the poor in great cities which exposes them to so many causes
of demoralisation. All this proceeds not from any unwonted or
extraordinary depravity in the character of