on need not be discussed; but it is impossible. Has any
magistrate ventured to interfere with Crockford's, where it is well
known that the highest gaming is carried on every night? Are you not
permitted to walk through the club at any hour of the day? Do they not
have the tables exposed to the view of every one? Yet who has
interfered, although you find that the smaller hells are constantly
broken in upon, and the parties had up to the police-office? Are not
the laws made for all? Is that an offence in the eyes of government in
a poor man which is not one in the rich? Yet this is the case: and why
so? Because the rich will game, and the government cannot prevent them.
Has not a man a right to do as he pleases with his own money? You
legalise the worst of gambling on the Stock Exchange, for a man can
there risk what he cannot pay: you cannot control the gaming of the
race-course, and yet you would prevent a man from gambling after his own
fashion. You wink at the higher classes ruining themselves, and you
will not permit the middle classes. Now the consequence of not having
licensed tables is, that you have no control over them, and the public,
who will play, are the dupes of rascals who cheat in every way: whereas,
if a certain number were licensed and controlled, those who play would
have a better chance, and the licensed tables taxed by government would
take care to put down all others who were not. We must legislate for
society as it is, not as it ought to be; and, as on other points, we
have found it necessary to submit to the lesser evil of the two, it is a
question whether in this also we might not do better by keeping within
due bounds that which it is impossible to prevent.

I was amused with an anecdote told me to-day. An Englishman and a
Frenchman arrived at Spa in the same diligence. They both took up their
quarters at the same hotel, but from that moment appeared to have no
further intimacy.

"Do you see that fellow?" would the Englishman say, pointing at the
Frenchman, "I know him, and he's a confounded rogue. I recommend you to
be shy of him."

"Voyez-vous cet Anglais?" said the Frenchman as the Englishman passed
by. "Gardez-vous en bien; c'est un coquin superieur."

Thus did they continue to warn the company of each other, until the
close of the season, when one fine day they both went off together in
the diligence, leaving all their debts unpaid, and their trunks and
portmanteaus for