On one occasion Justice Maule was about to pass sentence on a prisoner, who upon being asked to say why judgment should not be pronounced, 'wished that God might strike him dead if he was not innocent of the crime.' After a pause, the judge said:—'As the Almighty has not thought proper to comply with your request, the sentence of the court is,' &c.
A SAD REMINDER.
Every Englishman recollects the fate of that unhappy heiress, the richest of all Europe, married to a man of rank and family, who was plundered in the course of a few years of the whole of his wealth, in one of those club houses, and was obliged to surrender himself to a common prison, and ultimately fly from his country, leaving his wife with her relations in the greatest despair and despondency.'(23)
(23) Rouge et Noir: the Academicians of 1823.
GEORGE IV. There are few departments of human distinction in which Great Britain cannot boast a 'celebrity'—genteel or ungenteel. In the matter of gambling we have been unapproachable—not only in the 'thorough' determination with which we have exhausted the pursuit—but in the vast, the fabulous millions which make up the sum total that Englishmen have 'turned over' at the gaming table.
I think that many thousands of millions would be 'within the mark' as the contribution of England to the insatiate god of gambling.
I have presented to the reader the record of gambling all the world over—the gambling of savages—the gambling of the ancient Persians, Greeks, and Romans—the gambling of the gorgeous monarchs of France and their impassioned subjects; but I have now to introduce upon the horrible stage a Prince Royal, who surpassed all his predecessors in the gaming art, having right royally lost at play not much less than a million sterling, or, as stated, L800,000—before he was twenty-one years of age!
If the following be facts, vouched for by a writer of authority,(24) the results were most atrocious.
(24) James Grant (Editor of the Morning Advertiser), Sketches in London.
'Every one is aware that George IV., when Prince of Wales, was, as the common phrase is, over-head-and-ears in debt; and that it was because he would thereby be enabled to meet the claims of his creditors, that he consented to marry the Princess Caroline of Brunswick. But although this is known to every one, comparatively few people are acquainted with the circumstances under which his debts were contracted. Those debts, then, were the result of losses at the gaming table. He was an inveterate gambler—a habit which he most probably contracted through his intimacy with Fox. It is a well-ascertained fact that in two short years, after he attained his majority, he lost L800,000 at play.