[8] This probably refers to the anti-Walpole journal The Craftsman, accused of turning an instructive and effective means of communication into an instrument used to achieve personal interests and even spread slander and scandal.

[8] Secondly, Moreton expresses his indignation concerning the anonymous gentleman author of Discovery to Prevent Street Robberies, whom he accuses of having copied and even made money out of the schemes he had presented in his earlier pamphlet, Augusta Triumphans.

Describing Second Thoughts as an amended and enlarged version of his previous plan for the City of London, Moreton is eager to stress that his proposals are "humbly offered for the public welfare",[6] nevertheless he will "stand prepared for the sneers of those who despite everything and everybody but their dear selves".

As described by Moreton, the watchmen were "decrepit, superannuated wretches, with one foot in the grave and the other ready to follow"[10] and therefore more suited to the Poor House than for patrolling of the streets: "so little terror they carry with them, that hardly thieves make a mere jest of them".

Along with many of his peers, Moreton believes that English society is completely at the mercy of a dramatic rise in numbers of street-robberies, burglaries, and house-breakings, crimes which are generating anxiety among all social classes in the capital.

[12] Moreover, the latest changes of the urban surroundings have hardened the policing of the streets,[13] especially with shops, taverns, coffee-houses, theatres, pleasure gardens, remaining open in the evening and such a large number of people moving around after dusk.

In the early eighteenth-century London, the night watchman was indeed an old controversial figure (established for the first time in the 1285 Statute of Winchester), deeply-rooted in the belief that the individual citizen had to perform his social and moral duty for the well-being of the society.

[20] To avoid any possible abuse or misapplication in the distribution of the public money, Moreton suggests that the watch should be elected and paid by the householders themselves through an arranged rating and collecting system, and their annual wage should be increased to 20 pound,[21] so that "a poor man, who with frugality may live decently thereon".

[25] Watchmen also appear as the accused in the Old Bailey Session Papers under trials for murder and theft,[26] while the bribe they received from street prostitutes was quite common knowledge in eighteenth-century London.

[22] In Moreton's reform for the security and prosperity of the city, a pressing issue is represented by prostitutes, depicted as agents of destruction that easily mislead men into criminality and seem to be "the first motive to their villany, and egg them in all manner of mischief".

Here criminals "wait for signal of their scout; here they cast their schemes, and bring in advices; here they encourage and initiate young thieves; here they barter and sell their stolen goods; these are their exchanges and asylums after mischief".

[36] Social security was seriously threatened by the periodic disbandment of the military forces, a common situation at the conclusion of wars that led to hundreds of soldiers and sailors rambling around the streets of London without an occupation or a decent living arrangement.

[42] Hackney coach drivers were so severely criticized for being rude and abusive, that in 1682 the Common Council had to pass an act for their regulation aiming: to limit their number, to establish a valid licence and a fair charge, and to set out places where they could wait for hire.

The broad eighteenth-century definition for beggar embraced not just the poorest people having to live on the street, but virtually anyone who would stop you asking for money, work, or offering you a service such as: shoe cleaners, linkboys, milkmaids, chimney sweeps, etc.

In the Gin Era of 1720–50 very cheap liquors were sold indiscriminately, often resulting in a debauch of spirit-drinking, whose effects were seen on the streets, in the workhouses, in the growing misery of the poor and in an increase of criminality and violent acts.

At last, fear of arrests, his own hunger, the cries of a family for bread, his natural desire to support an irregular life, and a propense hatred to labour, turn but too many an honest tradesman into an arrant desperate rogue.

Bernard Mandeville, a British philosopher and satirist, states that alcohol abuse can produce devastating consequences for a person's judgment: "it makes man quarrelsome, renders 'em brutes and savages, sets 'em on to fight for nothing, and had often been the cause of murder".

[53] Even Henry Fielding, an active participant in the advancement of London law enforcement, points out in his 1751 essay An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers that such a limitless consumption among the poor seriously threatens the public order and therefore a strict regulation and discipline must be adopted.

Moreton believes that the rising criminality in the streets of London is a result of a late radical change in the English society, which seems to be pervaded by greed and hunger for power at all levels.

The love for luxury and a public short-sightedness have shaped a new reality based on avarice and on criminal behaviour, as a consequence of "our effeminacy, our toupee wigs, and powdered pates, our tea, and other scandalous fopperies".

He puts on trial especially bakers, coal merchants, butchers, and tallow chandlers that have dramatically risen their prices because "usual and moderate profit will not content them; they cannot drink malt liquor, and the poor must pay for the wine".

[60] Being these basic necessities, "for men not being able to support their families by honest labour, and being made beggars by reason of the dearness of provisions, ofttimes grow desperate and turn rogues".

[60] Moreton proposes a state regulation upon tradesmen, hoping that the "government will make them honest, even against their will",[61] but he also advocates a return to home industry, bringing prosperity to national trade and providing an opportunity to exercise the long-standing tradition of English craftsmanship.

[62] There was a general sense of falling into the worst possible form of behaviour and a common feeling that avarice, vice, idleness, blasphemy, vagrancy and crime were all entangles together pushing people (poor and wealthy, young and old) into a slippery slope to damnation.

As we have seen so far, Moreton pays close attention to the most practical points of his project, as it also happens with the inadequacy of the street lighting system in London; after all his aim is to render the city "strongly guarded, and so gloriously illuminated".

[65]Between the seventeenth-century and the early eighteenth-century the lightning system of the streets of London was radically transformed with the adoption of lamps with convex lens: a bull's eye glass that had the effect of concentrating the light.

[66] This new type of lamp lit up much more of the street than it was usual with candles and lanterns with horn sides; though they produced such a concentrated beam of light to dazzle the passers-by, and preventing them from seeing possible near dangers.

[68] These changes were well received by the public opinion, and even in the Old Bailey Session Papers was not uncommon to read about victims and witnesses claiming to be able to identify the accused because of a better street lightning.

He emphasizes the social impact that such plays might have on simple-minded people, and considers their relevance to the issue of community's well-being: "too many weak minds have been drawn away, and many unwary persons so charmed with his appearance on the stage, dressed in that elegant manner, and his pockets so well lined, they have forthwith commenced street-robbers or housebreakers; so that every idle fellow, weary of honest labour, need but fancy himself a Macheath or a Shepherd, and there is a rogue made at once".

Defoe was captivated by the criminal life, especially when it involved witty stratagems and subterfuges, and as it is clearly shown in his fictions, like Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack, his intent often seems more amusing than didactic.