The Budget debates in the Chamber of Deputies leave no doubt that, there is a strong tendency to exact a higher revenue in France from gambling. As is generally known, Britain and France look at gambling from different angles. The former country views it as pitch, not to be touched without becoming defiled; the latter taxes it on the same principles as any other luxury. Betting on race courses and card-playing in casinos have long been under contribution, and now the Chamber has turned its attention to clubs and has put a new tax on the "produce" of games of chance played in these establishments. Clubs already pay Fitate and local taxes, and it is impossible to say in genera] terms what is the difference between the new scale (which, of course, is subject to the assent of the Senate) amd the old, because the new tax consists of the difference between the old taxes paid last year and a percentage applied, on a sliding scale, to the "produce" from these gan.es, which means the "cagnotte' or percentage deducted by the management from the winnings @f successful gamblers.
Clubs in France are of two kinds, "open" and "closed." The latter, which are clubs in the English meaning of the term, can be regularly frequented only by members paying an annual subscription. The "open" club is almost always a room set aside by the management of a cafe for habitués—an elastic and economical system, the profit on refreshments being more than enough to cover the cafe pro-.prietor's outlay on lighting, heating, ete. In these cases the is very smal] and would probably not be worth the cost of collection. It is conceivable that the big Paris clubs, whose membership comprises many influential men, will strongly object to being placed on the same footing as casinos and having their financial affairs constantly looked into by Government inspectors; but. no French Government has ever liked clubs. In Napoleon's time they were regarded as convenient centres for "hatching conspiracies against the authorities, and thie suspicion still lurks in the official mind.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.