lawyers, financiers,
annuitants; and, in short, all the Jews of the nation lodged there.

The Quarter of the Palais Royal is chiefly inhabited by sharpers,
cheats, loungers, and idle people of all descriptions. Who could think
that a space of ground not exceeding 150 acres, contains more
heterogeneous materials blended together than are to be found in the
9910 acres (the French acre is one and a quarter, English measure) on
which the city of Paris stands? It is the great mart of pleasure, of
curiosity, and of corruption; and if the police wish to apprehend an
offender, it is in the Palais Royal that they are sure to find him.
Before the period of the revolution there were here but two public
gaming houses; but at present the number is really astonishing. The
police under Buonaparte did not discourage their increase; they argued
that these houses were the _rendezvous_ of all sharpers, villains, and
conspirators; and that they often saved an ineffectual search for them
in other quarters. A government like that of Buonaparte did not
reflect, that these houses, which thus abounded with desperate
characters, did not fail to perpetuate their number by the corruption
which they caused in the principles of the rising generation; and many
of the best informed Frenchmen are well aware that it will be the work
of time, to recover their country from the _demoralized_ state in which
it was left after the government of Buonaparte.

On the subject of gaming a French writer has justly observed: "Quand il
serait vrai que la passion du jeu ne finit pas toujours par le crime,
toujours est il constant qu'elle finit par l'infortune et le
deshonneur." "Granting it to be true, that the love of gaming does not
always terminate in crime, yet still it invariably ends in misfortune
and dishonour." But is it not rather improbable that those who have so
far transgressed as to apprehend the vigilance of the police, should
venture into the very places where they must be aware of immediate
detection?

Perhaps the same argument holds in Paris as in London, against totally
suppressing the haunts of these depredators on society, _That if there
were no thieves there would be no thief-takers_; and the police are
content to keep within moderate bounds, a set of men who often
contribute to their emolument, and whom they fear to exterminate. It
must, however, be allowed, that in all large towns, however great may be
the vigilance of the police, there stil