to help carry on the American war; it was only in 1823 that Great Britain went out of the gambling business. Every nation in Europe has indulged in it, with the exception (I think) of Russia. Paris resorts to a lottery to raise money for the illuminations on the national fête. States of the American Union derive revenue from gambling; and at least one American city swells its coffers from this source.
In the uses of the national revenue under the republic lies the clearest proof of the silent revolution. In 1808 Spain collected a total revenue of about twenty million dollars. Among the sources, by the way, were the monopoly of the sale of playing-cards, the tobacco monopoly, one-ninth of the tithes, the monopoly of gunpowder, sporting, gambling, the transfer of all kinds of commodities, a tax on the mines, a tax on papal dispensations, a tax on incomes of the inferior clergy, on stamps, and on ice. The portion nominally spent in Mexico, and not conveyed into the hands of the officials of the Crown, was probably one-fourth of the whole. It was expended chiefly on the army. Not a dollar appears to have been devoted to elementary education or useful public
