PUBLIC AND PRIVATE GAMBLING.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3230, 5 November 1881, Page 4

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE GAMBLING.

lam old enough to remember (aays Mr Sala writing in the Illustrated London News) when there were public gaming tables at Baden-Baden, Wisebaden, Saxon-les-Bain3, Aix-la-Chapelle, Geneva, i-'pa, and Homburg I just remember the closing of Frascatti's, and the tripots of the Palais Royal in Louie= Phillippe's time. I remember when Crockford's in St. James's street was a subscription gambliDg-house, and when the parish of St.. James's swarmed with dens where knaves or " G-reeks," ac they were then styled, fleeced foolish dupes at French hazard. All these places have since disappeared, and the only public gaming casino of importance left is Monte Carlo. But Ido most firmly believe .'and contend that there has never been a period within the past forty year? when private gambling was so prevalent as il is now, and when it produced more ruinou? effects than at presort. The two great capitals of Europe teer frith gambling clubs 'Poker,' 'euchre,' aril 'faro,' are placer! ■with insane eagerne? s all over the .Uciteci States; I can say without exaggeration, that I hare rarely met a Spaniard or a Spanish American or Russian, who was not an inveterate gambler ; and as far as the 'gilded youth' of England,, it is at baccaret, poker, and especially at 'Napoleon,' that theyare in the year 1881 busily empoyed in ruining themselves. Will the vice—if it be a vice—of gambling be extinguished by closing the roulette and rouge-et-noir tables of Monte Carlo ? How about TattersalPs ? How about the Paris Bourse and the London Stock Exchange ? And, finally, how about trade ? Here is a gentleman, who in the course of a year or two, makes a million >-■ Mf sterling out of speculations ■in and.aii'-- " many thousands of persons gram. Hoy» - --onder, to enable him have been rraned 1 v amj to r d to become , a millionaire P *»- • . a | him as a gentleman,. who> " owing to . ? and indefatigable' career of industry probity has been enabled &c. &c, &c>' or as a highly successful gambler.