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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 5


Notwithstanding the purity of morals enjoined by the court of
George III., the early part of his reign presents a picture of
dissolute manners as well as of furious party spirit. The most
fashionable of our ladies of rank were immersed in play, or
devoted to politics: the same spirit carried them into both. The
Sabbath was disregarded, spent often in cards, or desecrated by
the meetings of partisans of both factions; moral duties were
neglected and decorum outraged. The fact was, that a minor
court had become the centre of all the bad passions and
reprehensible pursuits in vogue. Carlton House, in Pall Mall,
which even the oldest of us can barely remember, with its elegant
open screen, the pillars in front, its low exterior, its many
small rooms, its decorations in vulgar taste, and, to crown the
whole, its associations of a corrupting revelry,--Carlton House
was, in the days of good King George, almost as great a scandal
to the country as Whitehall in the time of improper King Charles
II.[66] The influence which the example of a young prince, of
manners eminently popular, produced upon the young nobility of
the realm was most disastrous in every way and ruinous to public
morality.

[66] Wharton, `The Queens of Society.' Mem. of
_Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire._

After that period, the vast license given to those abominable
engines of fraud, the E.O. tables,[67] and the great length of
time which elapsed before they met with any check from the
police, afforded a number of dissolute and abandoned characters
an opportunity of acquiring property. This they afterwards
increased in the low gaming houses, and by following up the same
system at Newmarket and the other fashionable places of resort,
and finally by means of the lottery, that mode of insensate
gambling; till at length they acquired a sum of money nothing
short of _ONE MILLION STERLING_.

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