Having thus given the blazing characters of three capital sharpers of Great Britain, knaves of lesser magnitude can have no room to shine; the Alley throngs with Jews, jobbers, and brokers; their names are needless, their characters dirty as their employment: and the best thing that I can yet find to say of them is, that there happens to be two honest men among them,—Heavens preserve their integrity; for the place is a snare, the employment itself fatal to principle, and, hitherto, the same observation which I think was very aptly made upon the Mint, will justly turn upon them,—that many an honest man has gone in to them, but cannot say that I ever knew one come an honest man out from them. But to leave them a little, and turn our eyes another way, is it not surprising to find new faces among these scandalous people, and persons even too big even for our reproof? Is it possible that stars of another latitude should appear in our hemisphere? Had it been Sims or Bowcher, or gamesters of the drawing-rooms or masquerades, there had been little to be said; or had the groom-porters been transposed to Garraway’s and Jonathan’s, it had been nothing new; true gamesters being always ready to turn their hand to any play. But to see statesmen turn dealers, and men of honor stoop to the chicanery of jobbing; to see men at the offices in the morning, at the P—— house about noon, at the cabinet at night, and at Exchange Alley in the proper intervals, what new phenomena are these? What fatal things may these shining planets (like the late great light) foretell to the state and to the public; for when statesmen turn jobbers, the state may be jobbed. It may be true that a treasurer or cash-keeper may be trusted with more money than he is worth, and many times it is so; and if the man be honest, there may be no harm in it: but when a treasurer plays for more money than he is worth, they that trust him run a risk of their money, because, though he may an honest man, he may be undone. I speak of private, not public treasurers. Indeed, it requires some apology to say such a one may be an honest man; it would be hard to call him an honest man, who plays away any man’s money that is not his own, or more than he is able to pay again with his own. But if it be dishonest to play it away, that is, lose it at play, ’tis equally dishonest to play with it, whether it be lost or no; because, in such a case, he that plays for more than he can pay, his master runs the hazard more than himself; nay, his master runs an unequal hazard, for if the money be lost, ’tis the master’s, if there is gain, ’tis the servant’s. Stock-jobbing is play; a box and dice may be less dangerous, the nature of them are alike a hazard; and if they venture at either what is not their own, the knavery is the same. It is not necessary, any more than it is safe, to mention the persons I may think of in this remark; they who are the men will easily understand me.