be conceived of the allurements which
were thus held out to young men in business having the command of money,
as well as the clerks of merchants, bankers, and others. In fact, too
many of this class proved, at the bar of justice, the consequence
of their resort to these complicated scenes of vice, idleness,
extravagance, misfortune, and crime. Among innumerable instances are the
following:--In 1796, a shopman to a grocer in the city was seduced into
a gaming party, where he first lost all his own money, and ultimately
what his master had intrusted him with. He hanged himself in his
bed-room a few hours afterwards.

In the same year, Lord Kenyon in summing up a case of the kind
said:--'It was extremely to be lamented that the vice of gambling had
descended to the very lowest orders of the people. It was prevalent
among the highest ranks of society, who had set the example to their
inferiors, and who, it seemed, were too great for the law. I wish they
could be punished. If any prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and
the parties are justly convicted, whatever may be their rank or station
in the country--though they should be the first ladies in the land--they
shall certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory.'

In 1820, James Lloyd, one of the harpies who practised on the credulity
of the lower orders by keeping a _Little Go_, or illegal lottery, was
brought up for the twentieth time, to answer for that offence. This man
was a methodist preacher, and assembled his neighbours together at his
dwelling on a Saturday to preach the gospel to them, and the remainder
of the week he was to be found, with an equally numerous party,
instructing them in the ruinous vice of gambling. The charge was clearly
proved, and the prisoner was sentenced to three months' imprisonment
with hard labour.

In the same year numbers of young persons robbed their masters to play
at a certain establishment called Morley's Gambling House, in the City,
and were ruined there. Some were brought to justice at the Old Bailey;
others, in the madness caused by their losses, destroyed themselves; and
some escaped to other countries, by their own activity, or through the
influence of their friends.

A traveller of the coachmakers, Messrs Houlditch of Long Acre, embezzled
or applied to his own use considerable sums of money belonging to them.
It appeared in evidence that the prisoner was sent by his employers to
the Continent to take orders for carria