shillings, their chance of winning is fair, and the receipt of the money, when they do win, certain; notwithstanding the advantages are infinitely on the side of the Insurer, yet there are not wanting many instances where the Insured have acquired sums of money that have laid the foundation of their future welfare. But not to detain you with the relation of circumstances so familiar to daily experience, I will trespass upon your time no longer than is necessary to make some observations upon that more immoral and dangerous species of iniquity, daily practised, under pretence of putting the laws in force against offenders of the foregoing description: in doing which, I must enter into an history of fraud, perjury, subornation, extortion, and robbery of the most hideous description, wherein I shall be assisted not only by matters of fact, but by additional credit from some outrageous acts of delinquency, lately unfolded by the injured parties, to the Magistrates in Bow-street; from which it appeared, that a man of the name of JOHN BELL, who assumed the consequence of a country gentleman residing at Peckham, with a degree of audacity, the necessary concomitant of designing knavery, imposed himself upon a Magistrate as a man outrageously offended with the immorality of gaming houses, and with an unbounded anxiety to suppress the evil, obtained a warrant to appease the perturbed state of his conscience, and apprehend the keepers: with this instrument he marched, at the head of about a dozen constables, to an house in Pall Mall, between eleven and twelve o’clock-at night, and there, with all the insolence of an Arabian freebooter, domineered, and terrified the mistress, children, and guests, whom he conveyed to a watch house, where they remained till five o’clock in the morning, when this Algerine demagogue, condescended to take what he impudently called bail for their appearance, and thus the night scene ended; upon which there is but one circumstance creative of surprise, and that is, that no one man out of the twenty-four whose liberty he sported with, had spirit enough to cut off one of his ears, as a token of his imposture; for it must be remembered he was not a peace officer, or armed with any authority, but such as an highwayman assumes the moment he is cocking his pistol.