294

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

forced by clandestine indulgence, drink to excess on every ^occasion of smuggled opportunity. It may thus be predi- |cated that, where gaming is public, licensed and general, |fewer cases occur of that vile, morbid, felon-like evasion of |the laws, and maniacal devotion to the forbidden and con- |spirator-like assemblages. In England the card-gaming |establishments are unlicensed and unlawful, but most |notorious and numerous. Whilst the “ lower orders” are, avery fitly, prevented from risking a few shillings in a lottery,the “higher orders” are allowed to gamble with impunity,provided they subscribe to some establishment called a club,which can either evade or set the law at defiance. In thesequasi monastic abodes of selfishness, social sectarianism,and anti-social feelings, the British aristocracy aud legis-lators ensconce themselves, and think to keep their basepropensities aloof from the public eye. They become fromhead to foot, iutus et in cute, professed, reckless, fraudu-lent gamesters! Look at the daily records of the publicpress; see what exposures; what losses; what frauds;what transfer of property; what ruin ; what suicides occuramongst the “ higher orders ” of this aristocracy-cursedlaud! In France , some banker’s clerk, or grocer’s shop-boyis seen to lose the money he had to carry to his master. 'But in England, a yearly list of many pages, might be scomposed of “ men of family ” and families reduced tobeggary or to the sinecure pension list, by the inexplicablemania of “play.” Many “right honourable peers” andequally “ honourable” members of society, and even of thelegislature, have here been known to cheat for years dura-tion ; yet still their honourable fellow club-men haveshown themselves more anxious to share in the plunderthan to expose and expel the detected delinquents !

Nothing of this description exists in France, Italy , or ;Spain. In France the worst of gambling is that called j