All Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed?
He thanks you not; his pride is in piquette,
Newmarket fame, and judgement in a bet."
The following particulars relating to the manufacture of cards in the reign of Queen Anne, are derived from a broadside entitled "Considerations in relation to the Imposition on Cards, humbly submitted to the Hon. House of Commons." It is without date, but was certainly printed in the reign of Queen Anne, for the purpose of being circulated among the members of the House of Commons on the occasion of a proposal to lay a tax of sixpence per pack on cards. "Nine parts in ten of the cards now made," it is stated, "are sold from 6s. to 24s. per gross; and even these at 6s. will by this duty be subjected to £3 12s. tax. This, with submission, will destroy nine parts in ten of the manufacture; for those cards which are now bought for 3d. [per pack] can't then be afforded under 10d. or 1s. If any of your honours hope by this tax to suppress expensive card-playing, it is answered that the common sort who play for innocent diversion will only be hindered; the sharp gamesters who play for money will not be discouraged; for those who play for many pounds a game will not be hindered by 12d. a pack." There were then 40,000 reams of Genoa white paper annually imported, chiefly for the purpose of making cards. The business was in the hands of small masters, mostly poor, of whom there were no less than a hundred, in and about London. Their price to retailers, one sort of cards with another, was three halfpence a pack, and their profit not above a halfpenny. Though cards were at that period much smaller than they are at present, it is difficult to conceive how they could be manufactured at so low a price.
As Pope's description of the game of Ombre in the Rape of the Lock has been so frequently referred to by writers of all kinds,—whether treating, like Richard Seymour, Esq., on Court Games, or, like Miss Mitford, on Country Contentments, [200]—the omission of a reference to it here might be considered a gross oversight; but as it is impossible to go a pitch beyond the encomiums which have been bestowed on it, the following remarks by an old author may be introduced as a variation: "Mr. Pope, too, most certainly has his merit; yet the generality of polite men heed him little more than a pack-horse upon the road; they hear the jingle of his bells and pass on, without thinking of the treasure he carries. I have frequently thought it odd, that in all the good company I have kept, I never heard a line quoted from any part of him, unless, now and then, an accidental one, from his beautiful and accurate description of the game of Ombre." [201]
During the greater portion of the "Georgian Era" it would seem that cards were as much played at by all classes as in the reign of Queen Anne. In the early part of George I, Seymour published his 'Court Gamester,' written, as the title-page states, for the use of the young Princesses. [202] The only games of which Mr. Seymour treats are Ombre, Piquet, and the Royal Game of Chess. His instructions for playing at Ombre and Piquet are minute and precise, and have all the appearance of having been adapted for royal capacities. At cards with princesses, he may have been a master, in both senses of the word, and have played, in any company, a "decent hand;" but at Chess, it is evident, he was a mere novice,—"aut caprimulgus, aut fossor." Though, in the title-page, the work is said to have been written for the use of the young princesses, yet, in the preface, the author candidly acknowledges that he had been induced to compile it for the fashionable world at large, seeing that "gaming had become so much the fashion among the beau-monde, that he who in company should appear ignorant of the games in vogue would be reckoned low-bred and hardly fit for conversation." In his explanation of the Spanish terms employed in the game of Ombre, he is laudably precise; though when he renders the words, "No se deve, por Dios," by "It is not lost, by G—d," he seems wishful rather to give the spirit of the exclamation than the simple meaning of the phrase, and to be emphatic even at the risk of appearing profane. It is to be hoped that the princesses confined themselves to the original Spanish, and that they were ignorant that it contained an oath, supposing the objectionable English words to be merely added, elegantiæ causa, by their polite teacher.
About the time that Seymour's 'Court Gamester' was first published, a spirit of gambling seems to have pervaded all classes. Skill in the games at cards most in vogue was a test of gentility; stock-jobbing, or speculating for a rise or a fall in the public funds, had become a regular trade; and even pious ministers, of high dissenting principles, who looked on card-playing as sinful, scrambled as eagerly as the most profane for shares of South Sea stock, and were blinded to the sense of Christian duty by the dazzling hope of becoming suddenly rich. The South Sea bubble, however, at length burst, and its promoters and their dupes were appropriately caricatured in a pack of cards. [203] The South Sea directors, instead of having thousands of pounds presented to them by the shareholders, as a tribute to their speculative genius, were summoned before a parliamentary committee to give an account of their estates. Parliamentary committees have of late been employed for a purpose widely different:
" • • • • • multi
Committunt eadem diverso crimina fato:
Ille crucem pretium sceleris tulit, hic diadema."