It can require no trumpet of fame to establish a fact so universally known, that the TURF, with the nocturnal amusement of _hazard_, (which invariably follows it,) have, in conjunction, destroyed (or rather alienated) more PROPERTY, in the last _fifty_ years, than all the _hurricanes_ within the same given time, from one extremity of the kingdom to the other. Numbers there are at this moment in existence, who formerly possessed their numerous studs, their landed estates, their magnificent mansions, with all the comforts, all the elegant gratifications of life, some of whom are to be found in _prisons_; others pining in _obscurity_, severely wounded, even _in spirit_, by the barbed arrow of adversity; and a third part (by far the most numerous) living upon the liberality and hospitality of their kind and commiserating friends. But that so deep and desponding a shade may not cast too great a gloom over the picture for want of contrast, let the eye turn to an imaginary view of those likewise _living_, who, during the last thirty years of the fifty already alluded to, have risen from the very _lowest classes_ of society, to a degree of opulence beyond every moderate conception; when a few moments of retrospection may serve to convince the ruminative observer, that, however largely the ARTS and SCIENCES may be admitted to have improved, they bear no proportion to the pecuniary improvements of the _arts_ either upon the _turf_ or at the _gaming table_. No man of unsullied honour, and strict integrity, can become successful, for any length of time, amidst a _horde_ of determined _depredators_; experience having fully proved, that the most princely fortune cannot sustain itself against the stratagems of such villainous combinations.
The TURF, in respect to its pleasures, pursued with prudence, and entered into with moderation, by those whose immense property will admit of its support, is certainly one of the most noble, exhilarating, and amusing gratifications in the long catalogue of human enjoyments; but, unfortunately, there is the same insatiate infection in _ambition_ as in _wealth_, and neither one, more than the other, are ever to be satisfied. From this inordinate thirst of fame, this furor of fashion, this excess of inconsideracy, has recently arisen RACING STUDS of such rapacious enormity, that they have reduced to a _degraded_ state of _necessity_, many of the most opulent and most dignified individuals in his Majesty's dominions; to whom it must prove, upon the _downy pillow_ of repentant reflection, a most mortifying retrospection, that, notwithstanding the _thousands_ upon _thousands_ ingulphed within the _vortex_ of the TURF, there has been hardly an instance in which they have been enabled to become the guardians of their own honour, the protectors of their own property, or barely thought worthy of being entrusted with the _secrets_ of their own stables; for the subordinates in a training establishment have their _cards to play_ as well as their superiors; and having skill enough, in the language of Tony Lumpkin in the comedy, "to manage their own affairs by the _rule of thumb_," they do not omit to recollect the ancient axiom, that self-preservation is the first or most predominant law in nature.