The kingdom of the roués has been taken from them; and we do not suppose that there was ever a moment at which libertinism was so much below par in the great world as at the commencement of the year 1833. The recent elections have been the means of ejecting from parliament, and consequently from the kingdom, several of those burs upon the ermined mantle of the aristocracy, which have dishonoured it in the eyes of the kingdom; and fashionable swindlers are no longer able to brave their creditors under the buckler of a shameful impunity. What is the result? Half-a-dozen scapegraces are added to the loungers on the ramparts of Calais ;, and the supper-tables of St James’s street do lack the presence of more than one ‘honoured Banquo.’ Half-a-dozen French cooks are to be had at a discount,, half-a-dozen opera dancers,, half-a-dozen matchless equipages; , and half-a-dozen dozen ‘well-known’ hunters, hacks, and bits of blood are neighing in the yard of Tattersall, The bubble has burst!

Even the secondary gang of offenders (secondary in offence, however, as well as in personal consequence) are on the point of conviction and transportation to the ultima Sydney of public infamy. The press has at last pointed its powerful finger at those fertile nests of crime, the gambling-houses and hells of the metropolis;, and if a total ‘suppression of vice’ do not ensue from this favourable juncture of circumstance, its cultivation will at least be discouraged, and its flagrancies exhibited as flagrant.

For years past, the homilies of the hierarchy have been tried in vain;, in vain has the moralist prosed, and the divine essayed his preachments. Though they spoke as with the tongues of angels, the evil has still been on the increase. But calculating from the present corrupt state of society, we do not hesitate to announce that the crisis of the fever is over. Vice is going out of fashion and consequently to the bourne from whence no traveller returns. Calais is far from an amusing sojourn. The streets are as full of peat smoke as an Irish cabin;, and the environs as full of ague as fen ditches can make them. Every roué of fashion is not such a Diogenes as Brummel: and we predict that, , now the time is come for ‘selling up’ insolvents of fashion, and exiling them to Dessein’s and Rignolle’s Hotels,, the Kingdom of the Roués is taken from them!

The Court Journal: Gazette of the fashionable World. 16. November 1833. No.238.