20 MARCH 1897, Page 8

THE NEW DECISION ON BETTING.

WE do not think that the decision of the Queen's Bench Division in the case of "Hawke v. Dunn" will induce Parliament to remodel the laws of betting. If we understand public feeling aright, a great majority of the voters are opposed to any interference with private gambling, whether by cards or betting, but are equally opposed to the existence of any public gaming-table, or of any lottery, or of any method of betting having the characteristics of a lottery. Very few persons think it morally wrong to buy a lottery-ticket, or to play whist for money, or to bet on the issue of a horse-race, but an enormous number have learned from experience that any public incitement to those amusements produces social consequences of a very injurious kind. The practice provokes large sections of the people to waste money they cannot afford, with the usual result in increasing dishonesty, and weakens the force of the healthy con- viction that all gain should come from productive industry of some kind. So clear is the public sentiment, that although of all forms of gambling the lottery is the most attractive, and probably the most innocent, because the player cannot have any personal spite or any temptation to commit fraud, yet, so far as we know, from the day when lotteries were made illegal no one in Parliament has protested against the Act, though it is undoubtedly an infringement of reasonable liberty. No body of voters has ever made the repeal of the Lottery Acts a test- question on the hustings, nor has it ever been pleaded, even in the " newest " newspaper, that " the Puritans " had in this Act taken an interest out of rather mono- tonous lives,—the plea by which Bengalees still express their resentment at what they conceive to be a totally needless restriction. They paid for most of the old public works in Calcutta out of lottery profits, and they do not consider taxation at all a pleasant exchange. Now so far as we, who are not sportsmen, can perceive, the decision in "Hawke v. Dunn" simply makes the grip of the Anti-Lottery laws a little wider. The Judges have not interfered with private betting at all. They have simply declared that the bookmaker, a public bettor against all comers who stands or walks within an enclosure, is liable to punishment under the Act against betting-houses, and as the bookmaker really keeps a lottery-table open to all who accost him, we doubt if public sentiment will be opposed to the decision, and also whether the decision will be nugatory. The Anti-Lottery Law has stopped lotteries, and we do not see any reason why the Betting- house Act, now that it has been interpreted in that sense, should fail to stop the precisely similar trade of the book- maker. Of course, if there really is an immense body of voters determined that bookmaking shall go on, the Act will be repealed or altered ; but we doubt that determina- tion, and until it has been very clearly manifested Members of Parliament will certainly not venture to affront the clergy of all denominations, most philan- thropists, and that immense body of sensible people who, seeing little or no moral objection to the purchase of a chance if within the purchaser's means, hold public gambling to be exceedingly inexpedient. Whether it is inexpedient or not is of course a question of evidence, but it is certain that they think so, and that they watch the extraordinary increase in gambling on horses, an increase proved by the appearance of almost every newspaper in the country, with positive dismay. They would not perhaps have had the energy to pass a new restrictive Act, but now that the law is found to be on their side, they certainly will not allow it to be repealed, nor, we think, though that is more doubt- ful, to remain inoperative. They will say, with a great deal of reason, Here is an evil ; here is also a law against it; let us at all events see, before we make alterations, whether the law will or will not abate the evil. If it will, then the law is good; if it will not, then when that is proved will be the time for reconsidering the whole ques- tion.' That is a very unpicturesque and undramatic mode of reasoning, but it is the way of the English people, who always reason from the facts to the idea, and, on the whole, operates sufficiently well. It will be of no use to tell them that the law as now interpreted is illogical, because if betting is lawful so also is incitement to betting, for they care nothing about logic, and are quite aware that many things are permitted by the law, incite- ments to which are absolutely forbidden. Nor will it avail to say that the bookmaker's trade improves the breed of horses, for they do not believe the statement, care very little even if it is true, and if it is true, would much rather give heavy prizes for winners than allow a practice which they consider injurious to social well-being. Nor do we think the best argument of the bookmakers' friends, that there is now one law for the rich and another for the poor, will weigh very much on average minds. The rich are stopped by the decision from betting with bookmakers just as much as the poor, and if Peers can bet at ease in the Jockey Club, so can the poor if they like in each other's houses. Besides, there is a root of unreality in the whole argument of equality. If betting were prohibited as immoral, then any difference between rich and poor would be more than oppressive, would be positively wicked; but as it is only forbidden as inexpedient, difference of circumstances may fairly and sensibly be taken into consideration. The poor are much more injured than the rich by all forms of waste, and much more depressed by any diminution in the temptation to be industrious, or any persuasion that industry is after all very monotonous and slow. The whole of our liquor laws and our laws forbidding adulteration are devised for the benefit of the poor, not the rich, and we actually go the length of protecting the poor, and not the rich, from being cheated in bread, while the anti-beggary laws are directed, by their very nature, solely against the poor. It is, in fact, too ridiculous, in a, country like this, to deny that there are evils which affect the poor but not the rich—the abuses of pawnbroking, for example—and to say that we must not cure them for the more numerous class because, owing to accidental circumstances, we cannot be equally sure of curing them for another and more limited one. The idealists who raise the cry of equality, and object to any departure from it in principle lest they should introduce oppression, will do well to remember that in this country all political power is ultimately lodged in the hands of the poor, and that whenever they like to use it, as they do like in the matter of direct taxation, nobody dreams of resisting their will. The advocates of the bookmakers ought rather to rejoice that the decision leaves a class unfettered, and that one the very people who breed, tramp and race the horses for whom the advocates profess to be so interested. Why can they not be honest, and say openly that the bookmaker's trade makes life more exciting to his customers, and offers them opportunities of sudden gain which they are unwilling to forego ? We do not believe that any of these arguments will have influence with the average voter, and doubt, therefore, if Sir Blundell Maple or anybody else will be able within the next few years to relax the existing laws against betting. If they still prove inoperative, as is quite possible, it will be because they are evaded, or because the bookmakers combine to carry every case up to the Lords, and not because they are repealed or in any way seriously modified.

We do not, be it understood, object to horse-racing in itself, pursued as an amusement. We do not greatly believe that the practice does any good to the breed of horses, which for the most part are not wanted to be abnormally swift, and we are lost in amazement always at the interest which such contests excite. The entire cult of the horse, indeed, always strikes us as foolish, except in those who have to live by the sale or use of the animals themselves ; but there are, fortunately, a great many tastes besides our own in the world, and if rich men like to expend part of their means in testing the comparative speed of their beasts, we can see no manner of objection. Such tests do not tend to cruelty, but the reverse ; and if the swift horses are very useless, they are also very beautiful, and tend therefore to keep up a high standard in the selection, housing, feeding, and general caretaking of the entire race. But we should never dream of denying the right of the community to decide whether the gatherings which horse-races draw together are or are not injurious. If they are as bad as fairs the community has a right to suppress them as it has already suppressed most fairs, not as things in any way necessarily bad, but as things which experience had proved to be altogether inexpedient. If the community has no right of that kind—and really its right seems in some quarters to be challenged—then it has no right to pass sanitary laws, or laws of education, or the hundred laws of in- spection through which we are now beginning to use the collective strength of the State for the protection and guidance of the weak. We can easily conceive a com- munity which rejects all those devices and declares that it has no rights except moral rights over the individual ; but then, we take it, that community, while suffering all the evils of aggregation, would enjoy few of its benefits. The end of society is not the constable, who, indeed, in strict logic is no more defensible than the inspector, for how can a man be a citizen if he will not himself detect and pursue and punish crime ?