Second Thoughts are Best: Or a Further Improvement of a Late Scheme to Prevent Street Robberies

Second Thoughts Are Best: or, a Further Improvement of a Late Scheme to Prevent Street Robberies is a 1729 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. He wrote it under the name of Andrew Moreton Esq., presented as a dissatisfied middle-class old man extremely concer ... Read more

Second Thoughts Are Best: or, a Further Improvement of a Late Scheme to Prevent Street Robberies is a 1729 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. He wrote it under the name of Andrew Moreton Esq., presented as a dissatisfied middle-class old man extremely concerned about the increase in criminality around the 1720s. As in other essays, such as Every-body’s Business, Is No-Body’s Business (1725), The Protestant Monastery (1726), Parochial Tyranny (1727) and Augusta Triumphans (1728), Moreton here inquiries into a range of different social and moral issues: the increase in highway robberies, the inefficiency of the night watch, the wicked trade of gin shops, and the "infestation" of prostitutes, beggars, and vagrants all around London. Moreton's declared intention is "to break up street-robbers, nest and egg", providing practical solutions for a reformation of the night watch, manners, places, and even the theatre, reforms which would improve the quality of life. Defoe was particularly inclined to use pseudonyms, acquiring in this way the reputation as one of the most chameleon-like English writers. These multiple personalities allowed him to freely express his opinions on London's social and moral qualities (not without a hint of criticizing humor), and at the same time to express a resolute sense of duty, felt to be an essential characteristic of the eighteenth-century English citizen. Less