No doubt the general level of morality was low. Gambling of all kinds had increased enormously. There were gaming-houses and lottery offices everywhere. Faro banks and E. O. tables, and places where hazard, roulette, and rouge-et-noir could be played, had multiplied exceedingly. Six gaming-houses were kept in one street near the Haymarket, mostly by prize-fighters, and persons stood at the doors inviting passers-by to enter and play. Besides these, there were subscription clubs of presumably a higher class, and even ladies' gaming-houses. The public lotteries were also a fruitful source of crime, not only in the stimulus they gave to speculation, but in their direct encouragement of fraud. A special class of swindlers was created--the lottery insurers, the sharpers who pretended to help the lottery players against loss by insuring the amount of their stakes. Offices for fraudulent lottery insurance existed all over the town. It was estimated that there were 400 of them, supporting 2,000 agents and clerks, and 7,500 "morocco men," as they were called--the canvassers who went from door to door soliciting insurances, which they entered in a book covered with red morocco leather. It was said that these unlicensed offices obtained premiums of nearly two millions of money when the English and Irish lotteries were being drawn, on which they made a profit of from 15 to 25 per cent. It was proved by calculating the chances that they were some 33 per cent. in favour of the insurers. Even in those days the principle of profiting by the gambling spirit of the public was strongly condemned, but lotteries survived until 1826, since when the law has dealt severely with any specious attempts to reintroduce them under other names. RIVER THIEVES.