sed thus to stake their liberty for a certain number of years.
According to Hyde,(9) the Indians stake their fingers and cut them off
themselves to pay the debt of honour. Englishmen have cut off their
ears, both as a 'security' for a gambling loan, and as a stake; others
have staked their lives by hanging, in like manner! Instances will be
given in the sequel.

(9) De Ludis Orient.

But leaving these savages and the semi-savages of the very olden time,
let us turn to those nearer to our times, with just as much religious
truth and principle among them as among ourselves.

The warmth with which 'dice-playing' is condemned in the writings of
the _Fathers_, the venerable expounders of Christianity, as well as
by 'edicts' and 'canons' of the Church, is unquestionably a sufficient
proof of its general and excessive prevalence throughout the nations of
Europe. When cards were introduced, in the fourteenth century, they
only added fuel to the infernal flame of gambling; and it soon became
as necessary to restrain their use as it had been that of dice. The two
held a joint empire of ruin and desolation over their devoted victims.
A king of France set the ruinous example--Henry IV., the roue, the
libertine, the duellist, the gambler,--and yet (historically) the
_Bon Henri_, the 'good king,' who wished to order things so that every
Frenchman might have a _pot-au-feu_, or dish of flesh savoury, every
Sunday for dinner. The money that Henry IV. lost at play would have
covered great public expenses.

There can be no doubt that the spirit of gaming went on acquiring new
strength and development throughout every subsequent reign in France;
and we shall see that under the Empire the thing was a great national
institution, and made to put a great deal of money as 'revenue' into the
hands of Fouche.

But the Spaniards have always been, of all nations, the most addicted
to gambling. A traveller says:--'I have wandered through all parts of
Spain, and though in many places I have scarcely been able to procure
a glass of wine, or a bit of bread, or any of the first conveniences of
life, yet I never went through a village so mean and out of the way,
in which I could not have purchased a pack of cards.' This was in the
middle of the seventeenth century, but I have no doubt it is true at the
present moment.

If we can believe Voltaire, the Spaniards were formerly very generous
in their gaming. 'The grandees of Spain,' he says, 'had