Having expressed my disapprobation of gaming in such corrosive terms, I also feel impelled by candour and justice to make some remarks upon the system of play at public tables, especially those at the fashionable end of the town, where it is impossible that any foul play, fraud, or deception, can be practised; nor indeed is a man however sottishly drunk or, stupid, permitted to make a bet against the known chances of the game; at such tables, little skill or penetration is required, for games of chance are matter of mathematical consideration, and afford equal advantage to the inexperienced novice, and the most accomplished gamester; for it is a notorious fact, that many men play almost every night for ten years together, without any material loss or gain; it is in private play that the mischief is done, and I feel myself competent to assert, that more serious losses happen at Brighton, Bath, and the various races, where private parties are formed at taverns, or at the lodging of a sharper, in one year, than at the public gaming houses in London, in ten times that period. After all, what can be said, but that the aggregate of human wisdom has in all ages, and in all countries, been exerted in vain to conquer the evil, and it is some consolation that in England, it is seldom attended with the tragical consequences which the melancholy histories of gambling transactions of other countries relate. With respect to gambling in lotteries, the attention of the legislator seems to have been directed to the welfare of the lower order of people; but experience teaches us that their annual efforts, assisted by all the _vigilance_, _integrity_, _morality_, and _impartiality_ of Mr. T. Wood, like the ordinance of the Koran, destroys the soul to indulge the appetites of the body; hence the pernicious increase of “Little Go’s,” a species of lottery which ravages and preys upon the vitals of the poor, almost without the possibility of a temporary alleviation, which in their very nature cannot be productive of any advantage, even by accident, except to Pawnbrokers, the Lottery Inspector, and his amiable friend, the conscientious J. Holland, whose nefarious system of plunder exhibited a scene of iniquity unparalleled in the history of gambling enormities; for it appeared to the Magistrates in Bow-street, who fortunately possessed themselves of this dreadful fellow’s books, that the chances against the deluded wretches who were caught in his fool trap, stood thus, that in receiving a thousand pounds he had to return about forty, supposing he had been honest enough to have paid it—and in receiving one hundred and fifty, he had one guinea to return, and so on, day by day, for months together; and this precious system of plunder was unfolded and spread out in the presence of the cherub-cheek Mr. Wood. Thus much, however, must be said for adventurers in the established lottery, for though they play a guinea to eighteen