serable beings, it cannot be an easy matter to ascertain: but suppose, from the prodigious numbers, that are seen scattered about, like sheep having no shepherd, that in London, for example, there are five or six thousand: Nay; I have either read, or heard it said, ten thousand! but how that calculation can be made, I shall not take upon me to say; yet, suppose we call it half that number; are not five thousand destitute females too many to suffer through so poor a cause, and will not a much less number suffice to contaminate the morals of more than half the youths in town, and prove a source of destructive oppression to a vast number of inhabitants? for, without morals, how can we expect happiness, or what is to support the public good?
Then, what sort of beings are they, who can, with impunity, oppress these unfortunate women, to the entire destruction of all happiness, both national and domestic? Or where is the breast, truly warm in the cause of virtue and a country's good, who will suffer the continuance of a precedent so destructively oppressive, without exerting themselves in the