How pleasant, besides, to reflect that the storms of political strife, which agitate other heads, never reach yours. The violence of party spirit, the rancour of the press, are hushed before the decorous silence of the gaming-table and the death-like stillness of _rouge et noir_. There is no need of a censorship when there is a croupier. The literature of your realm is reduced to a card, to be pricked by the pin of a gamester; and men have no heads for the pleasures of reading, when stared in the face by ruin. Other states may occupy themselves with projects of philanthropy and benevolence, they may project schemes of public usefulness and advantage, they may advance the arts of civilisation, and promote plans of national greatness; your course is an easier path, and is never unsuccessful. But some one may say here, How are these people to live? I agree at once with the sentiment--no one is more ready to assent to that excellent adage--‘Il faut que tout le monde vive, even grand-dukes.’ But there are a hundred ways of eking out subsistence in cheap countries, without trenching on morality. The military service of Austria, Prussia, and Russia is open to them, should their own small territories not suffice for moderate wants and wishes. In any case I am not going to trouble my head with providing for German princes, while I have a large stock of nephews and nieces little better off. All I care for at present is to point out the facts of a case, and not to speculate how they might be altered. Now, to proceed. In proportion as vice is more prevalent, the decorum of the world would appear to increase, and internal rottenness and external decency bear a due relation to each other. People could not thus violate the outward semblance of morality, by flocking in hundreds and tens of hundreds to those gambling states, those _rouge et noir_ dependencies, those duchies of the dice-box. A man’s asking a passport for Baden would be a tacit averment, ‘I am going to gamble.’ Ordering post-horses for Ems would be like calling for ‘fresh cards’; and you would as soon confess to having passed a few years in Van Diemen’s Land as acknowledge a summer on the Rhine.