SPECULATORS AND STOCK GAMBLERS.—It is but fair to state that New York society contains a larger number of unscrupulous and daring speculators than any other American city. The variety and magnitude of its business, and its connection with all the financial centres of the world, open a wide theater for every legitimate and illegitimate undertaking. Here hundreds and thousands of plotters and schemers congregate, and ply their arts with varying successes and reverses. Men of no principle, and with no interest to serve save their own pockets, by artful inventions, gain the control of railroads, shipping-lines, stock-boards, and other moneyed interests, absorbing everything within their grasp, and paying only such bills as their circumstances compel. A striking example of this is seen in the management of one of the leading railroad interests of the State, its elections being manipulated in defiance of all law, under the direction of officers one of whom was a few years since an indigent surveyor, and another a retail pedler of dry goods. Many of these, support magnificent style, and live in costly palaces on Fifth avenue during their prosperity. Nothing reliable can, however, be predicted of any of them; they build upon the sand, and if rich to-day may be poor to-morrow, and are quite as likely to be executed as drowned, or to die in a prison as in a palace.