PECKSNIFF AS SPORTSMAN.
WE have a humble apology to offer to the Sporting League. We have entirely misunderstood their attitude on the question of betting. We were under the impression—so easy is it to misjudge our neighbour—that they regarded the practice with a lenient if not a friendly eye, and that they were disposed to extend their tolerance to bookmakers, as being a necessary, if at times a faulty, element in the great world of sport. Consequently, when the decision in "Hawke v. Dunn" surprised the racing public, we were quite prepared to see the Sporting League endeavour to bring about a change in the law. Their sympathies, we supposed, would be on the side of a profession which suddenly found itself in difficulties, and we should have held it no more than natural if they had promoted a Bill to legalise the vocation of a bookmaker when exercised on a racecourse. We were wrong. The Sporting League are quite in- different to the bookmaker's fate. He may live or die, sink or swim, grow rich or become a beggar. The League have, indeed, started a petition, and boast that they hope to obtain a million of signatures. But the object of the petition is not to help the bookmaker. He is not so much as mentioned in the course of it. What the petitioners are really anxious about is the relief of their own consciences. As the law stands, betting, at all events open and professional betting, is for- bidden on racecourses. As the petitioners declare that they have no wish to encourage or facilitate gambling, this prohibition might be supposed to have no interest for them. It has, however, a very keen interest. Unless the law is altered they will feel tainted by a possible illegality. Mr. Justice Hawkins has delivered a judgment which declares that when the law forbids betting in a "place," it forbids it in an inclosure at a racecourse. Well,' the careless reader of the petition may be sup- posed to interpose, why not ? If you do not want to bet on a race, how does it concern you that betting is for- bidden on the course ? ' But to make this inquiry is to show a very inadequate appreciation of the tenderness of the Sporting League conscience. Mr. Justice Hawkins has gone much further than he intended. The effect of his decision has been to disable the petitioners from so much as looking on at a horse-race or a football match. It is doubtful, indeed, whether they will be able to see the Boat-race to-day. As they read Mr. Justice Hawkins's judgment, it does much more than declare betting in "a place" illegal. It declares any inclosure or stand from which the petitioners can conveniently watch racing, foot- ball matches, or other similar competitions to be an illegal place, should betting be carried on in it.
Note the exquisite refinement of this reading of the Judge's words. It is one that would never have sug- gested itself to coarser intelligences. All that we can read in the judgment is a declaration that since betting is forbidden in "a place," it is forbidden in any inclosure or stand on a racecourse. But why should this disturb the Sporting League, who, by their own showing, do not bet? Because they feel convinced that the people around them are betting, and this, on their theory of Mr. Justice Hawkins's meaning, is not merely illegal in itself, it makes the whole stand or inclosure in which it is carried on "an illegal place." The whole mental process is set out before us. At the first stage of it we see the petitioners seated on the Grand Stand at Epsom or elsewhere, proud of their "interest in the maintenance of all British sports, games, and recreations, and in the liberty of the people to enjoy the same without vexatious interference." What, we ask ourselves, can possibly arise to disturb this innocent happiness? Ah, we have not made the needful allowance for the suffering that a morbid conscience can inflict. It has suddenly occurred to them that betting is inevitable where any large number of persons is assembled to witness any exciting competition. While they themselves are innocently waiting for the start, some one or other in the crowd is giving or taking the odds,—doing, that is, what Mr. Justice Hawkins has declared illegal in an inclosure or stand on a racecourse, and consequently, as they read lie words, making that inclosure or stand an illegal place. Now mark the sad plight in which these scrupulous souls find themselves. On the one hand, they like going to races, and they cannot conveniently see them unless they go to some stand or inclosure on the course. On the other hand, they are "sincerely desirous of abiding by the law of the land, and in no way participating, directly or indirectly, in illegality." Naturally, therefore, they "feel it a grievous hardship that under the decision aforesaid they should be debarred, unless they so par- ticipate, from the recreations which they have been accus- tomed to enjoy." Eden is no longer Eden to them because they know that somewhere or other in its recesses the serpent lurks. Nobody else would dream that his pre- sence affects those who have nothing to say to him. But the Sporting League know better. To them a place where illegality is possible is an illegal place, and the knowledge that they are in it is enough to destroy all their pleasure in the race.
It is an Act of Parliament—as interpreted by Mr. Justice Hawkins—that has been the source of their woe ; consequently it is in another Act of Parliament that they hope to find consolation. They ask that "the law may be so amended as to permit of their lawful attendance in a racecourse or other inclosures, and that the occurrence of betting therein may not render such inclosures illegal places." Scruples are hard things to deal with, and we fear that the Sporting League will not listen to an assur- ance that the occurrence of illegality in a place does not make the place itself illegal, that it only exposes the persons who bet in it to certain statutory penalties. It may be use- less, therefore, to urge that they may go on visiting these inclosures without fear or hesitation, provided that they take proper care not to be betrayed into offering or taking a bet themselves. But if they are inconsolable without a positive statutory assurance that an inclosure on a race- course does not become an illegal place by the mere fact that some evil-disposed person has used it for betting, we know of no reason why such an assurance should be withheld. A short Act might be passed reaffirming the decision in "Hawke v. Dunn," but declaiing in express terms that the illegality of the act of betting does not make the inclosure in which it is committed an illegal place. In this way the prayer of the petitioners would be granted, and granted, as they expressly ask, "without encouraging or facilitating gambling." The bookmaker, who, if we may judge from the terms of the petition, has no friends in the Sporting League, would be as badly off as he is now ; the only persons who would benefit by the Act would be that over-sensitive non-betting public which feels itself hurt by the knowledge that the bookmaker is round the corner.
Yet the petition is so unusual in its excessive simplicity, and this excessive horror of even the appearance of evil is so uncommon on racecourses, that a suspicion will pre- sent itself whether those who have framed it are quite as simple as they seem. Can it be that they have a different object, that they hope that during the passage of the Bill through Parliament some provision may be slipped in which will not stop short at saying that betting in an inclosure does not make it an illegal place, but will go on to declare that betting in such places shall no longer be deemed illegal ? We refuse to believe that the seeming innocence of the petition can mask so commonplace a design. But if what the Sporting League have in view is merely the legalising of professional betting, they may spare themselves the pains of enunciating it. Ministers are not likely to use their majority for giving statutory protection to bookmakers, and without the help of the Government even a bigger majority than the present would be powerless to pass any Bill that had this for its aim Sand end. No, we prefer to stand by our original reading of the petition, and to see in it the straight- forward utterance of men who cannot endure the neigh- bourhood of betting unless the place in which it goes on can produce a Parliamentary certificate that it is none the worse for the contact.
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