The idle vanity of being introduced into what is generally, but erroneously, termed genteel society, where a fashionable name announces an intention of seeing company, has been productive of more _domestic misery_ and more _real distress_, _poverty_, and _wretchedness_ to _families_ in this great City (who but for their folly might have been easy and comfortable,) than many volumes could detail. A mistaken sense of what constitutes human happiness, fatally leads the mass of the People who have the means of moving in any degree above the middle ranks of life, into circles where Faro Tables and other games at hazard are introduced in private families:--Where the least recommendation (and Sharpers spare no pains to obtain recommendations) is a passport to all who can exhibit a genteel exterior; and where the young and the inexperienced are initiated in every propensity tending to debase human character; while they are taught to view with contempt every acquirement, connected with the duties which lead to domestic happiness, or to those qualifications which can render either sex respectable in the world. When such infamous practices are encouraged and sanctioned by high-sounding names,--when sharpers and black-legs find an easy introduction into the houses of persons of fashion, who assemble in multitudes together, for the purpose of playing at those most odious and detestable games of hazard, which the Legislature has stigmatised with such marks of reprobation, it is time for the Civil Magistrate to step forward:--It is time for him to feel, that, in doing that duty which the Laws of his Country impose on him, he is perhaps saving hundreds of families from ruin and destruction; and preserving to the infants of thoughtless and deluded parents that property which is their birth-right: but which, for want of an energetic Police in enforcing the Laws made for their protection, is now too frequently squandered; and the mind is tortured with the sad reflection, that with the loss of fortune, all opportunities (in consequence of idle habits) are also lost, of fitting the unfortunate sufferer for any reputable pursuit in life, by which an honest livelihood could be obtained. In this situation, the transition from the plain gamester to the fraudulent one, and from that to every other species of criminality, is easily conceived: and it is by no means an unfair conclusion, that this has been the fate of not a few who have been early introduced into these haunts of idleness and vice; and who, but for such an education, might have become useful members of the State. The accumulated evils, arising from this source, are said to have been suffered to continue, from a prevailing idea, that Persons of Rank and their immediate associates were beyond the reach of being controlled, by laws made for the mass of the People; and that nothing but capital offences could attach to persons of this condition in life.