What does London representin William Blake's "London"?

Blake's poem "London" is the antithesis of his earlier
poems in "Songs of Innocence."  In the earlier poems, innocent children frolic,nature is
in bloom, and people are happy and loving.  It is a time parallel to the time before the
Fall.  But, in "London" which Blake chooses to attack
specifically the corruption in England's government and church, there is no allusion to
a natural world except the Thames River, which, unnaturally, has been "charter'd"; that
is, owned and bound by British law.

Thus,
London represents the evils of English society as the capital of England
and the center of its culture.  The strength of Blake's poem lies in its
ironic contrasts.  The chimney sweep's cry is an affront to the Christianity that the
Church of England promulgates and the soldier who fights to preserve the monarchy sheds
his blood for only the palace walls:

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How the chimney sweeper's
cry

Every blackening church
appals

And the hapless soldier's
sigh

Runs in blood down palace
walls.

Blake also decries the
institutions of English rule, centered in London.  He writes
that

In every
voice, in every ban

The mind-forged manacles I
hear.

With ironic use of
"ban" for marriage that binds together people who do not love one another, Blake reviles
the one sacrament that should offer hope: marriage.  But the unhappy husband goes to the
harlot, who in turn gives him syphlis that he passes on to his wife, causing "the
new-born infant's tear" as it is blinded.

By walking
specifically through the streets of London, the capital city of England, Blake uses
imagery and irony to point to the egregious conditions of his English government and
church.