88 Before the Bobbies
profanation of the Lord's Day and profane swearing; publication of blas-
phemous, licentious and obscene books and prints; selling by false weights
and measures; keeping of disorderly public houses, brothels and gaming
houses; procuring; illegal lotteries; [and] cruelty to animals.2^9Almost identical in purpose to Wllberforce's Proclamation Society, the Vice
Society drew its membership more from the urban middle classes and did
not have the official sponsorship that the Loyal Associations and Volunteers
enjoyed.^30 John Reeves was an early member and Patrick Colquhoun, one of
the best known police magistrates, was a vice-president.^31 The relationship
between the decline in morals and religion and the threat of revolution was
clear to the founders of the Vice Society. 'Th their mind[s], a Godless,
Sunday-less, licentious and violent France was a standing example of the
consequences of rebellion against traditional values and institutions, and a
warning to the English ... should they fail to tum from their {less developed)
wickedness.'^32 Like the Proclamation Society, the Vice Society prosecuted
offenders. Some of its agents were gentlemen volunteers but the Society, like
parishes, soon found it could not rely on them and began using paid agents.
Parish authorities apparently had no objection to the work of the Vice
Society but neither is there much evidence of shared enthusiasm. When the
Secretary solicited the help of the St James, Piccadilly vestry, it ordered the
beadles to assist the agents of the Society -if they were asked.3^3 It is possible
that vestrymen shared the opinion of the Vice Society's critics. William
Cobbett attacked the Society on the grounds that its existence constituted
an unwarranted criticism of the competence of the traditional law enforce-
ment institutions, secular and religious. Cobbett called the Vice Society 'a
standing conspiracy against the quiet and tranquillity of society ... giving the
laws ... an extension and a force which it never was intended they should
have'.^34 Whig-Radical critics of the Vice Society were suspicious of its
vigilante activity from the start. By 1804, accusations of entrapment brought
powerful criticism from William Wllberforce and other evangelicals who
could not sanction 'the principle of using deceit to discover and punish
offenders'. Its use of informers allowed conservatives and radicals to paint
the Society as a group of zealots who used spies and 'artifice', infringing on
the liberties and privacy of Englishmen.^35 Radicals also charged that the
Vice Society had a double standard. Sydney Smith called it 'a Society for
suppressing the vices of persons whose income does not exceed 500 1. per
annum'.^36
Like the debates in 1792, the debate over the Vice Society allowed reform-
ers and radicals to argue that they were the true defenders of traditional
authority and the poor. Their opponents, in tum, could be labelled innovat-
ors and their actions portrayed as threats to traditional English liberties. This
instance created an unlikely alliance between Foxite radicals and some