Thursday's Times contains an account of a Ministerial Bill which
has been introduced in the French Chamber for increasing the State control over gambling in France. It is stated that there are at present 147 watering-places with authorized gaming tables, and that the sums staked at these amount to over £40,000,000 a year. The profits made at the Enghien Casino last year reached £400,000, and those at Nice £380,000. The new Bill provides for an increased tax upon the net takings at the tables, ranging from 15 per cent. on £20,000 to 45 per cent. on £200,000. Tables are only to be authorized in resorts of which the value is recognized from the point of view of health, and the licences are not to cover more than five years. While everyone will recognize that gambling upon this huge scale is very much to be deplored, we doubt whether it is so serious as the evil of betting, fostered as it is in England by inducements in the daily press. The gaming table is only at the service of those who set out with the deliberate intention of finding it, but the insidious allurements of the halfpenny paper penetrate into every house and meet us at every street-corner.
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