lers within your realm, to be fleeced as
it may seem fit. What care you for the din of factories or the clanking
hammers of the foundries? The rattle of the dice-box and the scraping
of the croupier's mace are pleasanter sounds, and fully as suggestive
of wealth. You need not descend into the bowels of the earth for riches;
the gold, ready stamped from the mint, comes bright and shining to your
hand. Fleets may founder and argosies may sink, but your dollars come
safely in the pockets of their owners, and are paid, without any cost
of collection, into the treasury of the State. Manchester may glut
the earth with her printed calicoes, Sheffield may produce more
carving-knives than there are carvers. _Your_ resources can suffer no
such casualties as these; you trade upon the vices of mankind, and need
never dread a year of scarcity. The passion for play is more contagious
than the smallpox, and unhappily the malady returns after the first
access. Every gambler who leaves fifty napoleons in your territory is
bound in a kind of recognisance to return next year and lose double the
sum. Each loss is but an instalment of the grand total of his ruin, and
you have contracted for that.

But even the winner does not escape you. A hundred temptations
are provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into
expense--tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that
turn out sad comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more
limited expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a
summary process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate
one. In the language of the dock, it is only 'a long day' he obtains,
after all.

How pleasant, besides, to reflect that the storms of political strife,
which agitate other heads, never reach yours. The violence of party
spirit, the rancour of the press, are hushed before the decorous silence
of the gaming-table and the death-like stillness of _rouge et noir_.
There is no need of a censorship when there is a croupier. The
literature of your realm is reduced to a card, to be pricked by the pin
of a gamester; and men have no heads for the pleasures of reading, when
stared in the face by ruin. Other states may occupy themselves with
projects of philanthropy and benevolence, they may project schemes
of public usefulness and advantage, they may advance the arts of
civilisation, and promote plans of national greatness; your course is an
easier path,