[Footnote 36: The latter part of the Affidavit, already mentioned, also illustrates these assertions, and proves that they are but too well founded: It states--"That Gaming-Houses have increased to such a degree, that there were lately not less than six in one street near the Hay-Market, at all which persons stood at the door to entice passengers to play--That the generality of persons keeping these houses are _prize-fighters_, and persons of a desperate description, who threaten assassination to any person who will molest them."]
In a commercial Country, and in a great Metropolis, where from the vast extent of its trade and manufactures, and from the periodical issue of above Twenty Millions annually, arising from dividends on funded security, there must be an immense circulation of property, the danger is not to be conceived, from the allurements which are thus held out to young men in business, having the command of money, as well as to the clerks of merchants, bankers, and others concerned in different branches of trade: In fact, it is well known, that too many of this class resort at present to these destructive scenes of vice, idleness, and misfortune.[37]
[Footnote 37: The same Affidavit further states--"That the principal Gaming Houses at the West end of the Town have stated days on which they have luxurious dinners, (Sunday being the chief day,) to which they contrive to get invited merchants' and bankers' clerks, and other persons intrusted with money; and that it has been calculated, (and the calculation was believed not to be over-rated,) that the expences attendant on such houses, amounted to £.150,000 yearly, and that the keepers of such houses, by means of their enormous wealth, bid defiance to all prosecutions, some of them having acquired from 50 to £.100,000 each; considerable estates have been frequently won by them in the course of one sitting."]
The mind shrinks with horror at the existence of a System in the Metropolis, unknown to our ancestors, even in the worst periods of their dissipation; when a _Ward_, a _Waters_, and a _Chartres_, insulted public morals by their vices and their crimes: for then no regular Establishments--no systematic concerns for carrying on this nefarious trade, were known.--No Partnerships in Gaming-Houses, were conducted with the regularity of Commercial Houses.