He said, he knew no
reason why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public should
be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as
it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was
weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep
poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.
He observed, that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had
mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment was
usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it
employed: whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes:
whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not
arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in
dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take
them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses
they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon
others?
He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of
our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of
conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments,
the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness,
cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could
produce.
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