The New York Herald

GRAND SORTIE ON GAMBLING ESTABLISHMENTS IN BOSTON—ANTICIPATIONS FOR NEW YORK.
The recent descent of the Boston police, under the marshalship of Mr. Tukey, upon the gambling establishments of the Puritan city, resulted in the arrest of nearly a hundred persons, of a most mixed and motley character. Merchants, brokers, agents of religious book houses, actors, and the like, including all sorts of professions, were handcuffed and marched to the Leverett street jail, while the implements of the illegal trade—faro tables, roulette clothes, loaded dice, and snakes in the grass—were conveyed to the marshal's office, for the inspection of the curious. At the police examination, of course, many of the offenders indulged themselves with pew names, though their faces were well known to the admiring crowd of spectators, and the exposure will be a lesson to them for the future.

This system, however, of having a grand police avalanche, once in a while, is not original with Marshal Tukey. It is that adopted in London and Paris, and with a very beneficial effect. In London, particularly, gambling houses cannot be maintained for any long period. The police do their duty there, and invariably throw their nets with success, bringing to the police market very rich hauls of very strange fish, from noblemen down to liveried lacqueys. In this way, the gambling establishments are much rarer in London, than even in the small cities of the United States. Here, every city is a den of such establishments. New York city, in spite of her places of public amusement, which always tend to destroy the gambler's trade, has about eight hundred public gambling houses, situated in the most prominent parts of the metropolis. Twenty or thirty of the most extensive ones, where suppers and champagne are furnished gratis to visitors, are on Broadway, and do an immense business: which is always largely increased when Congress has broken up, and the lovers of play, including many illustrious politicians, come to the city for a brief sojourn. New York being in the centre of Boston, Providence, Hartford and Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and Albany, receives immense deputations from all these places, and at certain seasons of the year the business is exceedingly brisk, being carried on night and day, without intermission. During the sessions of Congress, the dull season comes on, for two-thirds of those in Washington, we presume, including all classes, politicians, office-seekers, clerks, representatives and senators, are there intent on making money change hands, at any and every hazard. Political economy teaches them in vain that the whole system is one of idleness. There is excitement in carrying it on, and carry it on they will, at the risk of reputation, wealth, and even of life itself.

These truths are so notorious that it is not necessary to enlarge upon them. Everybody who moves in society is perfectly aware of the extent of the infatuation which leads men to indulge their propensities for play, and the records of our courts are continually giving evidences of some of the curious and even criminal transactions to which such a state of things must lead. The simple citizen may ask, is there no law to restrain such establishments? Certainly there is: but then Mayor Kingsland has but just finished his arrangements for the regulation of the exterior of the city. He has only been on the outside. He has taken the omnibuses under his care, and made them run on proper lines, and with due observance to the city ordinances. Presently he will take the interior of the metropolis into consideration. Already he knows every gambling house in the city, and he will probably prepare for a general purification at an early day. No one will be able to tell the hour of his approach. His foot fall will be as light as snow, but his grasp will be like that of iron. It will scarcely do for him to attempt the capture of more than ten or twenty schools at a time, for his nets will glut the police market. The better method will be to select some of the grand establishments first, where our first-rate merchants quietly take a few chances on a large scale, and then proceed by degrees, till the clerks and even the errand boys are brought up into full public view. Some of those mercantile houses, which stipulate with their clerks that they shall not attend the theatre and places of rational amusement, may be astonished at the results of some of the captures, which can be made almost any night in the week, and, in the end, may learn to study the practicability of giving vent, in an innocent way, to the natural love of amusement, and, we may say, necessary to the health, physical and moral, of those who are engaged in the active business of life.

Within a few years, agents have been sent from this country, from Washington and other cities, to London, to obtain from Col. Mayne, the superintendent of police there, hints as to the best mode of carrying out a system of metropolitan police, active and efficient enough, not only to detect gross criminal offenders, but those who diffuse their poison in secret, narrow channels. The arrests made in Boston have been carried out, precisely as similar ones are always made in London. It takes but a few efficient officers, and a few minutes, to sweep the largest Augean stable. The police become fishers of men, and, after a few seizures, so terrify those who have any character to lose, that gambling is much diminished, and no longer, at least, carried on under the sanction of metropolitan governments.

That Mr. Kingsland intends to do something towards making the laws efficient, we have had reason to believe, from his public course already. It is not to be supposed that all his force is to be devoted merely to the child's play of his power, the whipping in of omnibuses into line, or of saving the shins of his fellow-citizens, by removing boards and other impediments to the free movements of pedestrians, from the side walks. What he has done in these respects are mere warnings to every species of transgressors against the laws and the ordinances of the city. A more thorough purgation is naturally to be expected, and that, too, at an early day. We shall then see how the New York police force will compare with that of Boston—and what style of men support the great fashionable gambling saloons of Broadway and of other parts of the metropolis.