THE LORDS ON BETTING. T HE Report of the Lords' Committee
on Betting is an agreeable surprise. We had looked, we confess, for a Majority and a, Minority Report. Instead of this we have a unanimous series of wise and moderate recom- mendations,—recommendations the merit of which lies qu te as much in what is left out as in what is included. The mischiefs produced by betting are so far-reaching that reformers are often tempted to invent a new offence against the moral law, and to treat the staking of any money what- ever upon an uncertain event as in itself wrong. The common-sense of mankind has always rejected this reason- ing. If the extremists are right, every instance in which one man takes money from another as the result of a wrong calculation is an act of robbery, and as morality knows no distinction between values, he who rises a winner from a rubber of whist at threepenny points is as great a criminal as he who wins thousands at Epsom. The ordinary human instinct rejects this as special pleading, and the whole method of reasoninc, is upset by the fact that the true gambler would rather lose than not play. This disposes of the theory that winning is robbery, and then gambling becomes merely one among many ways—though often, doubtless, a specially mischievous way—of wasting money. When once this conclusion has been arrived at we know where we stand, and this is the conclusion embodied in the Report, of the Lords' Committee. "Although the Committee do not look upon betting as a crime in itself," they deplore the excess to which it is carried. Betting in a number, probably in the majority, of cases has no connection with sport except in so far as the particular event on which the money is staked is the result of a race or a football match. A man may back a horse or a football team without taking the faintest interest in either sport. All that he cares for is the fact that if the backer has luck or judgment he may win what to him is a good deal of money.
Is this a matter for preventive legislation ? In so far as it is done deliberately by men who know what they are about, it is not. Betting leads, no doubt, to great and mischievous waste of money. But it is not different in kind from any other variety of the same folly. A man may ruin himself on the turf; he may even ruin himself at an athletic meeting. But he may equally ruin himself in buying pictures or first editions, if he happens to buy the wrong ones. If the law interferes and forbids one form of extravagance, why should not it forbid all forms ? The moment we have parted from the theory that there is a criminal element in betting which marks it off from all other forms of extravagance, we are confronted by the argument from consistency. To forbid extravagance generally would be to embark once more upon the tremendous experiment of sumptuary legislation and to court the defeat which has invariably attended it. But if betting be only a form of extravagance, how can it be more a subject for legislation than any other form ? Probably the rich as a class waste more money in un- necessary meals, and the working men waste more money in unnecessary pints of beer, than either of them waste in gambling. Can the law do in the one case what it cannot do in the other ? This is the question which the Lords' Committee have set themselves to answer, and they have answered it very well. They have in effect said :—‘ We cannot protect men against their bad selves, but we can to some extent protect them against their bad neighbours. The working man is exposed to special• inducements to bet from which the rich man is free. When the latter walks down St. James's Street, he knows, if his interests lie that way, where he can put his money on any " event " that be fancies. But he is not tempted to bet in the street itself. He goes to seek the opportunity. But in the case of the working man it is the opportunity that comes to seek him. He is asked to bet; he is Persuaded to bet; he has the golden results of fortu- nate betting dangled before his eyes. At the street-corner. at the office-door of the sporting newspaper, at the gate of his factory, on the threshold of his shop, there is the repre- sentative. of some betting agency eager to do business with him, and full of plausible arguments to show how little he is likely to lose and how much he may gain. Moreover, this external temptation net only comes to the working man in forms from which the rich man is protected by cfrcumstances' , it appeals to him when it comes with far greater force. The dead level of very small means is so depressing that the introduction of an element of chance— of a possibility that a week or two hence he may open his newspaper and read that a race or a football match has put him in possession of something over and above his weekly wage, something which is not appropriated before- hand to the very last penny—makes a difference in his life to which there is no counterpart in the life of a rich man. A bet brings the future down from some unknown space and places it at his very door. To all appearance he is like his fellows, no better off and with no greater chances. But in fact he is a possible favourite of fortune ; his dreams are no longer only dreams, they are visions that may 'soon be realised in fact.'
• The Lords' Committee have rightly confined themselves to the exceptional temptations to betting to which the working man is exposed. They "believe that the best method of reducing the practice is to localise it,"—to con- fine it, that is, to places where its existence is known and where no one need go unless he has the intention of betting in his mind, and so has passed beyond the stage at which the external temptation is operative. They recommend, therefore, that "on any racecourse book- makers should only be allowed to carry on their business within definite rings and enclosures." The man who comes into these enclosures is their lawful prey. He knows what he comes for, and if in the end he is the poorer for his visit, he must be assumed to have found compensation in the pleasure it gave him. At all events, whatever happens to him, it is himself, not the bookmaker, that he has to thank for it. At athletic meetings the case is somewhat different. Here betting is not yet universally recognised, and some of the evidence points to a, genuine dislike of it on the part of the owners of the grounds. But " since.the decision in the Kempton case it has been impossible for the police to stop bookmakers carrying on their trade except at the direct request of the proprietors of the ground,"—a request which they may for obvious reasons _be unwilling to Make. The Committee meet this by a recommendation that wherever a printed notice is "publicly exposed by the responsible authorities to the effec.z, that No betting is allowed,' a bookmaker who continues to bet shall be liable to summary arrest and a, fine." It is not quite clear whether the Committee include in this recommendation the prohibition of betting except "within definite rings and enclosures." But since the reasons which make this provision expedient on a racecourse have far more force at an athletic meeting, there can be no doubt that the same treatment is intended to apply to both cases. More important still are the proposals about street bet- ting. It is this that is "the cause of most of the evils arising from betting among the working classes," and in the present state of the law the police have not the means of putting it down. Where the bookmaker and his cus- tomers cause an obstruction the police can disperse them, and if they refuse to move on they can be summoned and fined. But a great deal of betting may go on without con- stituting obstruction in any legitimate sense of the word, and until it goes this length the police cannot interfere. The Committee recommend that betting in the street shall be made illegal, and that bookmakers guilty of it shall be punished by substantial fines, and on a third or subsequent offence sent to prison without the option of a fine, if the Magistrate tlthks fit. Where the persons with whom the boo er bets are children—and- the Committee think that this is often the case—this last penalty should be inflicted even for the first offence, and Lord lierschell's Betting and Loans Act (Infants) should be extended to ready-money betting with persons under age.
There are other suggestions in the Report ; but the most important recommendations are those we have enumerated. Very real gratitude is due to the Committee for the moderation which characterises their Report. They have confined themselves to those forms of the evil which can alone be dealt with by legislation, and they have shown that within these limits a useful and much-needed reform may be effected. We sincerely hope that this Report will speedily bear fruit in the shape of a short Act of Parliament.
Previous page
