[Sidenote: STOCK EXCHANGE GAMBLING INCREASES IN EUROPE WHILE PUBLIC GAMING-HOUSES ARE ON THE DECLINE.] The excitement which most men feel in gambling in one shape or another leads to its being practised to a very large extent, in spite of legal prohibition and the vigilance of detectives. Public betting houses have been suppressed, and it seems that betting on horse-racing has diminished; while on the continent, as governments have found themselves able to fill the national exchequer in a legitimate manner, Homburg, Baden-Baden, Ems, and the like, are no longer the chosen resort of rouge-et-noir players; but the vice has only broken out in other places, the results of which will be probably far more disastrous at Berlin, Frankfort and Vienna, in their respective Stock markets, as time goes on, than ever followed the play in the gilded saloons at the places mentioned.[27] [Sidenote: SPECULATION AN OUT-GROWTH OF PROSPEROUS TIMES] If it be conceded that playing for money, to which end speculation likewise in any other commodity than stocks and shares is simply the means, produces a pleasurable sensation in a man, and that very few men do not experience it some time or other, who have the opportunity of calling it forth, the greater number of men whose position enables them to gamble, will probably do it. At every rise and fall in a country’s prosperity there is a flow and ebb in the tide of speculation, not only in stocks and shares, but in all markets. We refer now to that class of speculation which is an excrescence of prosperous times. A merchant’s business is at all times more or less of a speculative nature, it cannot be otherwise; but this is very different from the speculation of outsiders in commodities which they know nothing about. Many persons would, no doubt, think it strange that there should be a feverish speculation sometimes carried on in such an article as pepper. Yet syndicates are occasionally formed for quietly buying up this article, and ascertaining the exact amount in stock, and the probable quantity that will reach the market by ship within a given time. When the syndicate has complete command of the supply, they commence to “rig” the market, or put the price up, then put the public in and let it down again. In the stock markets the _bona fide_ operations, as compared with the speculative, are probably as 1 to 20 at most, and in the colonial produce and other markets the proportion is only something more. It may be imagined, therefore, to what an extent the speculative operations in an article like pepper may be carried when it is considered that the weekly deliveries for consumption amount to 250 tons. [Sidenote: COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY UNHEALTHILY FOSTERED BY ILLEGITIMATE SPECULATION.]