'Signed, W. KINSBY.'
It appears, however, that the gentleman changed his mind and did not commit suicide, but surrendered at the Insolvent Debtor's Court to be dealt with according to law, which was a much wiser resolution.
To the games of Faro, Hazard, Macao, Doodle-do, and Rouge et Noir, more even than to horse-racing, many tradesmen, once possessing good fortunes and great business, owed their destruction. Thousands upon thousands have been ruined in the vicinity of St James's. It was not confined to youths of fortune only, but the decent and respectable tradesman, as well as the dashing clerk of the merchant and banker, was ingulfed in its vortes.
The proprietors of gaming houses were also concerned in fraudulent insurances, and employed a number of clerks while the lotteries were drawing, who conducted the business without risk, in counting-houses, where no insurances were taken, but to which books were carried, as well as from the different offices in every part of the town, as from the Morocco-men, who went from door to door taking insurances and enticing the poor and middling ranks to adventure.
It was gambling, and not the burdens of the long war, nor the revulsion from war to peace, that made so many bankruptcies in the few years succeeding the Battle of Waterloo. It was the plunderers at gaming tables that filled the gazettes and made the gaols overflow with so many victims.
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.
'Faro gradually dropped out of fashion; Macao took its place; Hazard was never wanting; and Whist began to be played for stakes which would have satisfied Fox himself, who, though it was calculated that he might have netted four or five thousand a year by games of skill, complained that they afforded no excitement.
'Wattier's Club, in Piccadilly, was the resort of the Macao players. It was kept by an old maitre d'hotel of George IV., a character in his way, who took a just pride in the cookery and wines of his establishment.