Larry had declared war, for he added, as he sent his resolution to the clerk’s desk:  “At the proper time I mean to say something about these damnable hells.”  Throughout the city there was a buzz; for at that time New Orleans had not the fourth of her present population.  Any move of this sort was soon known to its very extremes.  The trustees of the hospital, the stockholders in these licensed faro-banks—­for they were, like all robbing-machines, joint-stock companies—­and many who honestly believed this the best system to prevent gaming as far as possible, were seen hanging about the lobbies of the Legislature.  Each had his argument in favor of continuing the license, but all were based upon the same motive—­interest.  The public morals would be greatly injured, instead of being improved; where there were only four gaming establishments, there would be fifty; instead of being open and public, they would be hid away in private, dark places, to which the young and the innocent would be decoyed and fleeced; merchants could not supervise the conduct of their clerks—­these would be robbed by their employes.  As the thing stood now, cheating operated a forfeiture of charter or license:  this penalty removed, cheating would be universal.  “What would become of the hospital?” the tax-payer asked.  “God knows, our taxes are onerous enough now, and to add to these the eighty thousand dollars now paid by the gamblers—­why, the people would not stand it, and this great and glorious charity would be destroyed.”

To all of these arguments Larry was deaf; his constituents expected it of him; the Christian Church demanded it.  They were responsible to Heaven for this great sin.  The pious prayers of the good sisters of the holy Methodist Church, as well as those of the Baptist, had at last reached the ears of the Almighty, and he, Larry, felt himself the instrument in His hands to put down the d——­d infernal sons of b——­, who were robbing the innocent and unsuspecting.

There was no use of urging arguments of this sort to him:  if the Charity Hospital fell, let her fall, and if the indigent afflicted could not find relief elsewhere, why, they must die—­they had to die anyhow at some time, and he didn’t see much use in their living, anyhow; and as for the taxes, he was not much concerned about that:  he had but little to be taxed, and his constituents had less.  “I, or they, as you see, are not very responsible on that score.  By the God of Moses, this licensed gambling was a sin and a curse, if it did support seven or eight thousand people in the Charity Hospital every year:  that was the reason so many died there, the curse of God was on the place; for the Scripture says, the ‘wages of sin is death,’ and I see this Scripture fulfilled right here in that hospital, and the moral and religious portion of my constituents so feel it, and I am bound to represent them.  And the d——­d gamblers were no friends of mine or of the Church.”