ds in the situation of an auctioneer, and offers
it to the best bidder.

~132~~are, therefore, upon honour; and whoever declines to pay his loss
is posted upon a black board, declared a defaulter, shut out of the
association, and called by the community a _lame duck_.

"It is not a little extraordinary, while the legislature and the judges
are straining every nerve to suppress low gambling and punish its
professors, they are the passive observers of a system pregnant with
ten times more mischief in its consequences upon society, and infinitely
more vicious, fraudulent, and base than any game practised in the hells
westward of Temple Bar; but we are too much in the practice of gaping at
a gnat and swallowing a camel, or the great subscription-houses, such
as White's, Brooke's, and Boodle's, would not have so long remained
uninterrupted in this particular, while the small fry that surround
them, and which are, by comparison, harmless, are persecuted with the
greatest severity. As there is a natural disposition in the human
mind for gambling, and as it is visible to all the world that many men
(cobblers, carpenters, and other labourers), by becoming stock-jobbers,
are suddenly raised from fortunes of a few pounds to hundreds of
thousands, therefore every falling shop-keeper or merchant flies to this
disinterested seminary with the same hope: but the jobbers, perceiving
their transactions interrupted by these persons intruding, in order to
keep them at a distance, formed themselves into a body, and established
a market composed of themselves, excluding every person not regularly
known to the craft.{16} As the brokers found difficulty always to meet
with people that would accommodate them either to buy or sell without
waiting in the regular

16 An article in their by-laws expresses, that no new member
shall be admitted who follows any other trade or business,
or in any wise is subject to the bankrupt laws: at the same
time it is curious to observe, that most of them are either
_soi-disant_ merchants or shopkeepers.

~133~~market in the Bank, to save themselves time they got accommodated
among these gamblers in buying or selling as they wished; at the same
time they gave the jobber one-eighth per cent, for such accommodation.
As the loss was nothing to the broker, of course this imposition was
looked over, because it saved his own time, and did not diminish his
own commission.{17} It is clear