_Sharpers, who take Lottery Insurances_, by which means gambling, among the higher and middling ranks, is carried on, to an extent which exceeds all credibility; producing consequences to many private families, otherwise of great worth and respectability, of the most distressing nature; and implicating in this misery, the innocent and amiable branches of such families, whose sufferings, arising from this source, while they claim the tear of pity, would require many volumes to recount; but silence and shame throw a veil over the calamity: and, cherished by the hopes of retrieving former losses, or acquiring property, in an easy way, the evil goes on, and seems even yet to increase, in spite of every guard which the Legislature has repeatedly endeavoured to establish. With a very few exceptions all who are or have been proprietors of the Gambling Houses are also concerned in the fraudulent Insurance Offices; and have a number of Clerks employed during the drawing of the two Lotteries, who conduct the business without risk in counting-houses, where no insurances are taken, but to which books are carried, not only from all the different Offices in every part of the town, but also from the Morocco-Men; so called, from their going from door to door with a book covered with red leather for the purpose of taking insurances, and enticing the poor and the middle ranks to become adventurers. _Several of the Keepers of Insurance Offices, during the interval of the drawing of the English and Irish Lotteries_ have invented and set up private Lotteries, or Wheels, called by the nick-name of _Little Go's_, containing Blanks and Prizes, which are drawn for the purpose of establishing _a ground for Insurance_; the fever in the minds of the lower order of the people is thus kept up, in some measure, all the year round, and produces incalculable mischiefs; and hence the spirit of gambling becomes so rooted from habit, that no domestic distress, no consideration, arising either with the frauds that are practised, or the number of chances that are against them, will operate as a check upon their minds. In spite of the high price of provisions, and of the care and attention of the Legislature in establishing severe checks and punishments for the purpose of preventing the evil of Lottery Insurances, these criminal agents feel no want of customers; their houses and offices are not only extremely numerous all over the Metropolis; but in general _high-rented_; exhibiting the appearance of considerable expence, and barricadoed in such a manner, with iron doors and other contrivances, as in many instances to defy the arm of the Law to reach them.