LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
SUPERIOR VIRTUE, AND THE "STAR'S" TIPS. [To TEX EDITOR OF THE "SPICTATOR.1
Sts,—In your paper of the 7th inst. are two articles under the above headings which make a most serious charge against certain members of the two families of Cadbury and ltown- tree. I read those articles with equal surprise and distress.
I have waited in the hope that some member of the incriminated families would write and disprove some of the facts very circumstantially alleged by you ; but no word has been said in contradiction. As it is highly improbable that your charges should be unknown to the persons in question, I
am driven to conclude that the facts are as stated in your paper, and that the persons accused prefer to allow judgment to go by default. And surely, on the facts thus set forth, the judgment must be one of the severest condemnation possible. For truly the picture these facts present is of the saddest kind. Men who profess to love their fellow-men, and who well know betting to be one of the greatest curses of our modern life, do their best to promote that evil, and by their papers day by day and week by week lead poor men and women to pecuniary and moral ruin. I do not envy them their success in this enterprise.
In my efforts to find some reason for conduct so unin- telligible as to be almost incredible, I thought that perhaps the Star might in the main be devoted to the promotion of temperance and peace and other good things, and that the old hope of doing evil that good may come of it was at the root of the matter. I have accordingly examined three successive numbers of the Star paper, and I can find in them nothing whatever to promote any good work, nothing to refine or elevate. But I do find in them, not only the numerous articles on racing and betting, but advertisements of worthless quack medicines, of a dry gin, such headings as "Mr. Hall Caine Brings David and Uriah Heep up to Date," and an air of utter vulgarity pervading almost every column in the paper. I can find, then, no material for the miserable plea that evil was done for the sake of doing good.
But perhaps it may be suggested that the end in view is gradually to wean the betting public from their bad ways and lead them to better things. The facts seem to forbid any such extenuation. Nothing, I should think, can be worse than the Star as it exists at present. No reading can be less improving, very little so low. And you have stated that the Star has been such a success that it has induced other papers to follow its example and to give more place to the advice of the tipsters. So that the evil is spreading, and the Star sheds its baneful influence even beyond the area of its own readers.
I will not allow myself to write the words which come into my mind as descriptive of the conduct of those who carry on such publications as the Star; but I heartily join with you in asserting that, on the facts which you have alleged, and which are hitherto uncontradicted, the action of the conductors of this paper is worthy of the strongest possible condemnation,.
[We have dealt with Sir Edward Fry's letter elsewhere.---. ED. Spectator.]
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