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turbulence. An enlargement of the population of a town could 

 only aggravate all the special troubles and dangers to which those 

 living in it were subject, add to the number of its idle, thriftless, 

 criminal, and dangerous classes, and invite disease, disorder, and 

 treasonable tumults. As, therefore, to amplify the street arrange- 

 ments, or otherwise enlarge the public accommodations for trade or 

 residence, would be to increase its attractions, the true policy was 

 generally assumed to be in the other direction. In London, not only 

 its own corporation followed this policy, but parliament and sovereign 

 systematically did the same. 



Once, for instance, a proclamation was issued to forbid, under 

 heavy penalties, the erection of any houses, except such as should 

 be suitable for the residence of the gentry, within three miles of the 

 town ; another followed which interdicted householders from en- 

 larging the accommodations for strangers within the town ; another 

 enjoined all persons who had houses in the country to quit the town 

 within three weeks, while constant efforts were made to ship off those 

 who had none to Ireland, Virginia, or Jamaica. 



In spite of all, new houses were built on the sides of the old 

 country roads, the suburban villages grew larger and larger, till at 

 length they were all one town with London, and the population 

 became twice as great, and the commerce much more than twice as 

 great as at the time of the great fire. Even when at last plans of 

 real improvement began to be entertained, it was no thought of 

 resisting the increase of disease, pauperism, and crime, by other 

 means than fencing it out, that produced the change, but mainly the 

 intolerable hindrance to commerce of the old-fashioned arrangements. 

 Though some refused to see it, and still protested against the plans 

 of improvement as wholly unnecessary, hazardous, reckless, and 

 extravagant, and denounced those who urged them as unprincipled 

 speculators or visionary enthusiasts, the merchants generally could 

 no longer avoid the conviction that their prosperity was seriously 

 checked by the inadequacy of the thoroughfares of the town for the 

 duty required of them. Parliament was therefore induced, in the 

 latter part of the last century, to authorize a series of measures 

 which gradually brought about, in the course of fifty years, larger 

 and more important changes than had occurred before during many 

 centuries. 



As the definite aim of these changes was to get rid of certain 

 inconveniences which had previously been classed among the neces- 

 sary evils of large towns, and as the measure with reference to 

 which the purpose of their design was limited is thus clearly estab- 



