THE GROWTH OF GAMBLING.
THE Church Congress, during the session which has just closed, had the moral and social questions involved in the growth of gambling brought before it in a discussion in Which many clerical speakers recounted in the language of alarm how the passion for gambling is spreading among the working classes, especially in the North of England. That gambling is seriously on the increase among the working classes, and that its effects are even more disastrous upon artisans and colliers than upon the rich, there seems no possibility of doubting. It would seem as if the moral disease of gambling, which, though always capable of affeCting indi- viduals, is generally kept under restraint, were apt occasionally, and during certain stages of human development, to break out in the form of an epidemic. Drinking and gambling Were the two moral diseases most easily taken by the richer and more highly developed classes a hundred years ago. There was nothing out of the way in Charles Fox gambling all night, and Mr. Pitt drinking port till he saw two Speakers. Pessi- mistic moralists may tell us that, in truth, we are morally no better now ; but they cannot deny that the rich, as a class, have ceased to be absorbed either by drinking or gaming. Individuals, no doubt, become drunkards and gamblers, just as individuals have the gout ; but drunkenness and gambling are not, as far as the rich are concerned, any more than gout, the diseases of the age. The working classes, however, just now seem to have the same readiness in catching drinking and gambling which existed in the upper ranks of society two genera- tions ago. Fortunately, there are signs that, just as public opinion effected a change in social habits, and gradually pro- duced sobriety among the rich, so public opinion among the working men is making them feel that the temptation to take too much is not one to which it is creditable to yield. Gambling, however, seems not yet to have reached the point at which moral, like physical, diseases begin to work their own cure. It is still increasing in malignity, and still, we fear, tending to cover every year a wider area.
Perhaps one reason why the passion of gambling is less easily brought within bounds than that of drink, is the fact that it is by no means easy to prove to a man that it is wrong to gamble. Indeed, there is logically little more to be said against gambling than against any other form of waste and extravagance. We may, of course, take the ground accepted by the jurists who refuse to recognise a gambling contract because it is nutlunt pact urn, and argue that it is immoral to gamble, because no man ought to have a money transaction with another in which there is not a reciprocal benefit,—an actual exchange. Such a principle, however, cannot really be main- tained as universal ; for if it is, we must forbid all presents, for in such transactions the material benefit is necessarily not reciprocal. Again, if we take the commonest argument of all against gambling, the argument that a man by gambling is depriving himself and his family of the comforts, and perhaps of the neccessaries of life, we shall find that we are taking far too low ground to make our arguments really victorious. An appeal to a man's instinctive sense of right and wrong is the only way in which he can be prevented from doing something by which he believes that he will increase his material wealth,—and a gambler postulates a man holding such a belief. To attempt to convince such a man with the declaration, What you are doing is imprudent' —and this, in fact, is all the 'ruin to wife and family ' argument comes to—is, then, utterly useless. A gambler who gambles to make money, before he begins shuts his mind to the idea of imprudence, and plays or bets, he would frankly tell you, in order that he may gain enough to make himself and his belongings comfortable. People who try to argue gambling down by prudential considerations, fail to realise that the gambler does not risk his stake merely because he thinks it wicked to do so, and wants to get the pleasure which is popularly supposed to come from wickedness for its own sake. The collier or the factory-hand who bets on pigeons, or dogs, or horses, or football-matches, does not do so because he thinks it is wrong, but from exactly the same motive which moves men when they worry themselves into a fever to get 4 instead of 3 per cent. for their capital. Both want to get a little more money to add to their yearly resources, in the shape of that extra money, that margin of superfluous un- appropriated cash which, whether incomes are reckoned in thousands or hundreds or tens, is always sought for with so hungry a longing. Remember, next, that every gambler believes he is sure to win, and it is not difficult to see how he treats the argument from prudence. If he does not say so, he certainly believes that in betting on a horse which he thinks he knows is "a moral certainty" for the Derby, he is really doing the most prudent thing in the world. Again, another of the arguments commonly employed to combat gambling is usually quite inoperative. It is wicked, it is argued, to win money from a man who very likely cannot afford to pay. You take his money, and give him nothing in return. No doubt, under certain circumstances, this argument affects the gambler strongly. In most cases, however, he deals with some betting-man who obviously prospers on bookmaking, and the force of such reasoning is lost upon him. He knows quite well that he will not ruin the bookmaker.
In truth, gambling, like so many other questions in morals, cannot be successfully met in any of the ways we have been discussing, in which the practice is always viewed in the abstract and in isolation. In itself, gambling is a human transaction which is neither moral nor immoral. It is only when we come to view it in relation to human character that we fully realise its evils, and learn how to condemn it without being forced into some position untenable in logic or useless in practice. It is when we come to consider the effect of gambling upon a man's nature, that we find arguments against it which can neither be set aside as mere arguments of convenience, nor as based upon no logical foundation. It is because gambling, when it takes firm hold, demoralises a man, because it brutalises and materialises his nature, because it either absorbs his spirit with the lust of greed, or enervates him by excitement without enthusiasm, that gambling is wrong. We cannot, perhaps, say why gambling should weaken and destroy the moral tissues, any more than why the bacillus tuberculosis should destroy the membranes of the body; but in both cases experience shows us that the fact is so. No one who has ever watched a gambler could deny that the man's nature was injuriously affected. Gambling, in truth, does not, as is often said, necessarily make men idle and careless—the Chinese are the most industrious and most thorough people On the face of the earth, and yet a Chinaman who does not gamble is hardly known—but it does, when practised to excess, debauch their minds. For those, then, who believe that it is a man's business while on earth to guard his moral nature from deterioration, there will never be any difficulty in finding arguments against gambling. One point, however, remains unnoticed. It may be said we have only shown, and only can show, that gambling when it absorbs,—i.e., gambling to excess, debauches a man's moral nature; and that what is required is to show that all gambling is wrong. We admit the criticism. It cannot be said that experience shows us that a man's moral nature is ruined by an occasional bet or an occasional game of whist. He is not absorbed by the passion, and he is, in fact, u.ninjured. In truth, we want another word. Such transactions between man and man are not gambling in the sense in which we con- sider the word should be used,—i.e., in the sense of monetary transactions based on chance, where the desire to make money, not to win at the game, is the dominant motive. The desire to make money out of that blind revolution of chance over which no human power has control,—that is what absorbs a man, and debauches his mind. Of course, those trans- actions which when dominated by the mere desire to make money become gambling in the bad sense, but which when free from that desire are in themselves innocent, may still afford temptation to those peculiarly sensitive to the gold- hunger, and so be harmful. In such cases, they are doubtless to be condemned; but the fact of their harmfulness or inno- cence must be one for individual judgment. In themselves they are not immoral, and it is useless to pretend that they are.
Perhaps, after writing as we have done, some apology is due to our readers, for we do not profess to have added anything new to a matter so often discussed. The considerations we have urged, however, have an interest apart from themselves. They afford yet one more proof of how superior in the realm of morals are conscience and instinct to logic. Logic never will and never can show gambling to be worse than the feckless muddling away of money which is the attribute of many worthy men. Instinct, however, finds no difficulty in drawing the dis- tinction, and in showing which is wrong and which is merely an infirmity. Though it was one of the most depraved of human beings who said, "If we follow instinct truly, it will never lead us wrong, if we follow reason, it will always betray us," the words contain a patent truth, and one which no analysis of the functions of the mind, however ingenious, will be able to overthrow. Reason in the abstract may be a perfect guide ; but in fact it is often an orientated compass, the divergence of which we are utterly unable to estimate.
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