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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN GAMING IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER VI. page 14


A foreigner has advanced an opinion as to the source of the
gambling propensity of Englishmen. `The English,' says M.
Dunne,[68] `the most speculative nation on earth, calculate even
upon future contingences. Nowhere else is the adventurous rage
for stock-jobbing carried on to so great an extent. The fury of
gambling, so common in England, is undoubtedly a daughter of this
speculative genius. The _Greeks_ of Great Britain are, however,
much inferior to those of France in cunning and industry. A
certain Frenchman who assumed in London the title and manners of
a baron, has been known to surpass all the most dexterous rogues
of the three kingdoms in the art of robbing. His aide-de-camp
was a kind of German captain, or rather _chevalier d'industrie_,
a person who had acted the double character of a French spy and
an English officer at the same time. Their tactics being at
length discovered, the baron was obliged to quit the country;
and he is said to have afterwards entered the monastery of
La Trappe,' where doubtless, in the severe and gloomy religious
practices of that terrible penitentiary, he atoned for his past
enormities.

[68] `Refexions sur l'Homme.'

`Till near the commencement of the present century the favourite
game was Faro, and as it was a decided advantage to hold the
Bank, masters and mistresses, less scrupulous than Wilberforce,
frequently volunteered to fleece and amuse the company. But
scandal having made busy with the names of some of them, it
became usual to hire a professed gamester at five or ten guineas
a night, to set up a table for the evening, just as any operatic
professional might now-a-days be hired for a concert, or a band-
master for a ball.

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