rading
incidents, is at an end. In the second place, this very circumstance
brings the worst part of the practice within the reach of the law.
Public gambling, which only existed by and through what were popularly
termed _hells_, might be easily suppressed. There were, in 1844, more
than twenty of these establishments in Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and St
James's, called into existence by Crockford's success.'(69)

(69) Private MS. (Edinburgh Review, vol. LXXX).

Whilst such was the state of things among the aristocracy and those
who were able to consort with them, it seems that the lower orders were
pursuing 'private gambling,' in their 'ungenteel' fashion, to a very sad
extent. In 1834 a writer in the 'Quarterly' speaks as follows:--

'Doncaster, Epsom, Ascot, and Warwick, and most of our numerous
race-grounds and race-towns, are scenes of destructive and universal
gambling among the lower orders, which our absurdly lax police never
attempt to suppress; and yet, without the slightest approach to an
improperly harsh interference with the pleasures of the people, the
Roulette and E.O. tables, which plunder the peasantry at these places
for the benefit of travelling sharpers (certainly equally respectable
with some bipeds of prey who drive coroneted cabs near St James's),
might be put down by any watchful magistrate.'(70)

(70) Quarterly Review, vol. LII.

I fear that something similar may be suggested at the present day, as to
the same notorious localities.

Mr Sala, writing some years ago on gambling in England, said:--

'The passion for gambling is, I believe, innate; but there is, happily,
a very small percentage of the population who are born with a propensity
for high play. We are speculative and eagerly commercial; but it is rare
to discover among us that inveterate love for gambling, as gambling,
which you may find among the Italians, the South American Spaniards, the
Russians, and the Poles. Moro, Baccara, Tchuka--these are games at which
continental peasants will wager and lose their little fields, their
standing crops, their harvest in embryo, their very wives even. The
Americans surpass us in the ardour of their propitiation of the gambling
goddess, and on board the Mississippi steamboats, an enchanting game,
called _Poker_, is played with a delirium of excitement, whose intensity
can only be imagined by realizing that famous bout at "catch him who
can," which took place at the horticultural _fete_