524 Letter on Affairs in general. [MAT, 



even standing upon its brink. The very danger of exposure, which you as 

 ;i frequenter run in common with the master of the gaming house, is 

 craftily turned by him into an excuse for securing to himself advantages 

 over you in the game, which are permitted in no other country but our own ; 

 und if he should happen to take further advantages than those which custom 

 warrants, a circumstance by no means improbable, you have no remedy, 

 except the useless one of breaking his bones, to which you can resort with- 

 out injury to your character as a gentleman. Besides, the law, though 

 severe, is so irregularly enforced in England, that almost in every instance 

 in which it is enforced, it appears unjust and partial in its operation. 

 Hence, in various parts of the countiy, gaming houses, in which every 

 species of abuse is permitted, are kept open, not only with the connivance, 

 but almost under the avowed patronage of the local magistracy. I am 

 uot speaking here at random. In this very town, from which I now 

 \vrit*>, a printed note of invitation was put into my hands about three years 

 ago, at the August races, by a minion "of the police, stating that a Mr. 

 Cauty, for I see no reason why I should mince the fellow's name, had 

 opened a house in Blake-street for the race week, at which he should be 

 happy to see such of his friends I disclaim being of the number as were 

 inclined to amuse themselves in the evening either at hazard or at rouge et 

 iwir. At the time 1 received this invitation, I was in the York Tavern, 

 conversing with a magistrate of the county, who had been that very day, 

 I believe, attending a preparatory reform meeting at the Whig Hotel of 

 this ancient city. I put the note into his hand with a significant hint, that 

 i thought he had better commence his projects of reform at home. His 

 reply was immediate. " You are mistaken ; this is no concern of mine ; 

 I cannot either mar or mend it; for the offender dwells not within my 

 jurisdiction. 1 ' A somewhat similar occurrence happened, as I am told, a 

 few years ago at Brighton ; but there the magistrate, who received the 

 card of invitation from a police officer who knew him not, had jurisdiction, 

 and immediately exercised it in suppressing the house. But did he effect 

 any good by that suppression ? None whatever. The place was changed, 

 but the practice, with the single exception of its being more secret, re- 

 mained unaltered. And here I may remark, that just in proportion to the 

 privacy, with which gaming is carried on, is there scope given for trickery 

 and imposition. Hence I prefer much those public safaris dejeu, into 

 which any well dressed person may walk, whether he plays or not, and in 

 which a man cannot become a professed gambler, without the fact being 

 rendered notorious to his relations and friends, and what is often much 

 more material, to his creditors and tradesmen, whom his practices are cer- 

 tain to injure in the long run. Besides, the perpetual superintendence, 

 which the police exercises over those places, drives in a great measure from 

 them those common cheats and robbers, who swarm in our private gaming 

 houses, and checks, if it does not entirely prevent, that deliberate system 

 of intoxication and pillage, which forms so prominent a feature in the 

 tactics of our modern sharpers. Add to this, the very fear of being dis- 

 covered in such a scene of contamination by a party, who could stand aloof 

 from it, without exciting suspicion or remark, would, in a thinking coun- 

 try like our own, deter numbers from mixing in it. At present no man 

 detects another in a gaming house without being himself a fellow sinner, 

 and I believe I may also add a fellow sufferer ; and thus a sense of common 

 interest compels each to shield the other from the disgrace and the penal- 

 tics attendant upon detection. Under the system which I recommend, the 



