"The Scandalous Practice of Ballad-singing, is the Bane of all good Manners and Morals, a Nursery for Idlers. Whores and Pickpockets, a School for Scandal, Smut and Debauchery, and ought to be entirely suppressed, or reduced under proper Restriction. If Ballads do not, yet they ought to come under the Stamp Act, and the Law looks on Ballad-singers as Vagrants."

---"J.Ralph", the Grub-Street Journal, May 1733