<P> Partially because of the population pressures, property crime became a business both for the criminals and those who fed off of the criminals . Major crime lords like Jonathan Wild invented new schemes for stealing, and newspapers were eager to report crime . Biographies of the daring criminals became popular, which spawned fictional biographies of fictional criminals . Cautionary tales of country women abused by sophisticated rakes (such as Anne Bond) and libertines in the city were popular fare, and they prompted fictional accounts of exemplary women abused (or narrowly escaping abuse). </P> <P> Increased population also meant that urban discontent was never particularly difficult to find for political opportunists, and London suffered a number of riots, most of them against supposed Roman Catholic provocateurs . When highly potent, inexpensive distilled spirits were introduced, matters worsened and authors and artists protested the innovation of gin (see, e.g. William Hogarth's Gin Lane). From 1710, the government encouraged distilling as a source of revenue and trade goods, and there were no licenses required for the manufacturing or selling of gin . There were documented instances of women drowning their infants to sell the child's clothes for gin, and the facilities created both the fodder for riots and the conditions against which riots would occur (Loughrey and Treadwell, 14). Dissenters (Protestants not conforming to the Church of England) recruited and preached to the poor of the city, and various offshoots of the Puritan and "Independent" (Baptist) movements increased their numbers substantially . One theme of the ministers was the danger of the Roman Catholic Church, which they frequently saw as the Whore of Babylon . While Anne tended to favor the High Church faction, particularly towards the close of her reign, the court of George I was more closely allied with Low Church and latitudinarian elements and was warmer to nonconformists . The convocation was effectively disbanded by George I, who was struggling with the House of Lords, and George II was pleased to keep it in abeyance . Additionally, both Georges were concerned with James Francis Edward Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, who had considerable support in Scotland and Ireland, and many were suspected of being closet Jacobites . Walpole inflated fears of Stuart sympathisers from any group that did not support him . </P> <P> The literature of the 18th century, particularly the early 18th century, which is what "Augustan" most commonly indicates, is explicitly political in ways that few others are . Because the professional author was still not distinguishable from the hack - writer, those who wrote poetry, novels, and plays were frequently either politically active or politically funded . At the same time, an aesthetic of artistic detachment from the everyday world had yet to develop, and the aristocratic ideal of an author so noble as to be above political concerns was largely archaic and irrelevant . The period may be an "Age of Scandal", as authors dealt specifically with the crimes and the vices of their world . </P> <P> Satire, in prose, drama and poetry, was the genre that attracted the most energetic and voluminous writing . The satires that were produced during the Augustan period were occasionally gentle and nonspecific, commentaries on the comically flawed human condition, but they were at least as frequently specific critiques of specific policies, actions and persons . Even the works studiously nontopical were, in fact, transparently political statements in the 18th century . </P>

Who called the augustan age as the age of prose and reason