THE LORDS ON GAMBLING.
TBE Lords spiritual and temporal of England feeling their way, under a cooling shower of anticipatory criticism from their leader, towards measures for the abatement of social evils chiefly, though far from solely, prevalent among the humbler classes of their countrymen, present a spectacle full of interest. On Monday, without a division, the Upper House of Parliament agreed, on the Motion of the Bishop of Hereford, to appoint a Select Committee to inquire into the increase of public betting, and whether any legislative measures are possible and. expedient for check- ing the abuses occasioned thereby. Lest, however, the impression should become current that in assenting to this step the Government were in some way committed to resultant action, the Prime Minister took care to disclaim any responsibility either for the inquiry itself, or for any intention of putting on the statute-book any enactments its - conductors =tight recommend. For the matter and the manner of the caveat which he thus entered, Lord Salis- bury has been treated to a liberal allowance of those lectures on his flippancy and want of interest in moral questions which we may be sure he never reads. It must be acknowledged that his tone in dealing with subjects of this kind is often calculated to create the impression of frigidity, or of pessimism,—at any rate as to the possible results of legislative remedies. The curiously elaborate ignorance, too, which flashes out here and there in his speeches as to the habits and customs of the classes beneath his own makes it difficult to believe that he realises with adequacy the nature and scale of the evils prevailing among them. Thus in the debate on Monday Lord Salisbury understood the Bishop of London—who knows the working classes as well as any prelate who ever sat on the Episcopal Bench—as having said that on Sunday mornings large crowds might be seen "assembling round one man in order to give him tips." Corrected in this grotesque error by Lord Tweedmouth, the Prime Minister airily proceeded :—" Am I wrong in my technical terms ? Very well, then, to pay him for tips," and went on to contend that "if there is such a large popular feeling in favour of such a thing as that,' it is unlikely that any Means at the disposal of the Executive would succeed in pitting it down.
• The key and the phraseology of these remarks are cer- teinly unfortunate, for they are calculated, notwithstanding the speaker's general avowals of his sympathy with episcopal desires for the stoppage of betting, to produce the im- pression that he knows very little about the workings of the gambling curse among the masses of the people, and has paid very little attention to the subject. Yet we feel sure that the point of view represented by Lord Salisbury on this and other questions of social reform is a point of view which it is essential to have put forward when any projects are afoot for coercive action in the domain of morals. For one thing, although Lord Salisbury has a singularly small acquaintance with the manner of life of the vast majority of his countrymen, he yet knows them, deep down, by a kind of instinct, and the accuracy of his forecasts of the way in which they are likely to regard particular experiments in legislation is by no means to be measured by his know- ledge of the precise circumstances in which those experi- ments would have to be tried. We do not know whether any eager reformer is anxious to legislate in connection with betting on such lines as would practically involve, for success, a large development of a system of private detec- tion and espionage ; but, if there be, Lord Salisbury is certainly right in holding that the people of this country would, as a whole, be resolutely opposed to any such innovation on English habits. Not only so, but their opposition would be amply justified, as being inspired by the feeling that the mutual confidence by which alone life in any form of society is made really tolerable would be far too great a price to pay for a restriction, or even aboli- tion, of existing temptations to the vice of gambling. A quite different order of conceivable remedy by legislation for the prevalence of betting is that of prohibiting the pub- lication of the odds on races in newspapers and elsewhere. Lord Salisbury is of opinion that the conductors of news- papers would not "submit quietly" to a law of that descrip- tion, and apparently has in view the possible creation of martyrs for freedom of the Press, who would furnish the centres of a popular agitation before which Parliament and the Executive might well quail. We hardly think that the situation would work out exactly inthat fashion. If a law forbidding thepublication of the odds and thetips of sporting prophets were passed, we are inclined to believe that the conductors of the great majority of respectable papers would accept the new situation with great equanimity, so long as the enactment was enforced all round. Many of them would doubtless be glad enough to have so much space saved for other kinds of intelligence, and would be by no means sorry to cut off a department of which it is impossible that they can feel by any means proud. Nor does it seem to us likely that the papers of inferior reputation and character would be able to collect any con- siderable force of public opinion behind them if they tried to make profit by defying the law which their better-class contemporaries were ready to obey. None the less do we think that a prohibitory law would be of more than doubt- ful policy, and that its net effect would very possibly be more of a deterioration than an improvement in morals' The desire for the excitement and the possible gains of gambling is, as Lord Salisbury discerns, so widely, spread and so deeply rooted that its suppression cannot, with any hope of success, be undertaken by legislation. It will find means of gratification somehow, and if the publication of odds on races were forbidden by law, there would, in all probability, be developed a, vast surreptitious machinery for the circulation of the same class of information. To the sordid joys of gambling would be added those of dodging the police, and the attitude of a large ?Action of the population, which at present, for the most part, is sufficiently law-abiding, would become quite appreciably less so. That has been the working of prohibitory legis- lation in regard to liquor-selling in the United States, and it would be the working of prohibitory legislation in regard to betting or as to the publication of odds in this country. It does not follow that nothing should be done to eleam. up and strengthen the law which now exists in regard to bookmakers. Their practices, which, in bringing ternpta-, tion to gambling in the way of children, are peculiarly odious, are already to a large extent forbidden under penalty. But the penalties are so inadequate, as com- pared with the gains of the occupation, that the law is openly defied. A law ought either to be enforced or repealed; and as nobody will propose to legislate for the permission of the trade of bookmaking in all its branches, there is a strong case, as it seems to us, for making the penalties such as would be felt even by the most prosperous of tipsters. If, and when, Parliament undertakes thst task, .it may well consider whether, as the Bishop of London suggests, the facilities provided by the wording of the Act of 1867 for evading the clear intention of Parlia- ment should not be removed. But, for the most part, it is not by the action of law that we can hope to deal with evils ' which appear to be specially associated with the atmosphere of excitement bred by - the conditions of modern life. Only by developing a more general interest in his work, whatever it mw be, and by stimulating wholesome interests outside his work, can the average Englishman who is liable to fall under the evil spell of the rambling habit be saved from that degrading and often ruinous fate. It is said, and we believe truly, that the upper classes gamble less than they did. There is still a great deal too much of it, but the habits of Charles Fox's circle in that respect are surely much rarer than they were. The upper classes are also increasingly alive to their responsibilities towards their fellow-citizens of other, and especially the working, classes.
They can render no greater service than by using their influence, directly and indirectly, to mitigate the great national evil into which the Lords' Select Committee is to inquire.
Previous page
