complex, but it is a unit ; his public and private
actions may be many sided, and for a time may
spring from opposing moral sources, but in the
end their exercise blends the opposing sources and
changes the individuality. For instance, no people
can rule itself democratically at home and govern
other peoples autocratically abroad. The home
democracy in time becomes tainted. The moral
sources of one system become blended with the
polluted sources of the other. And so it is with
the character of the man and the citizen. The
citizen cannot act contrary to the man.
One need hardly trouble to appeal to history to
prove these statements. A parallel between our
present state of society, rotting with luxury and
intoxicated with excitement, and the Eoman Empire
in the days of its decline is on every moralist's
lips and is becoming hackneyed. Philip of Mace-
don, it is said, encouraged gambling amongst the
Greeks, on the ground that it corrupted their minds
and made them docile under his rule. From time
to time in our own country the gambling mania
has become chronic, the last of these outbursts
being about a century ago, when Brooke's and
GAMBLING AND CITIZENSHIP 125
White's stripped their foolish victims, and when
the flick of cards was heard throughout the abodes
of fashion. Of that time Sir George Trevelyan
writes : —
The poHtical world, then as always, was no better
than the individuals who composed it. Private vices
were reflected in the conduct of public affairs ; and the
Enghsh people suff"ered, and suffers still, because, at a
great crisis in our history, a large proportion among
our rulers and councillors had been too dissolute and
prodigal to be able to aff"ord a conscience.^
The gamblers were in power. There was plenty
of party but little politics, and what politics there
was was largely an art of recouping gaming losses
from the public purse. Public life was saved only
by the political overthrow of the gambling aristo-
cracy. Fox, possessing though he did a genius
which could throw off the taint of his circum-
stances, failed mainly owing to his lack of steadi-
ness, dignity, prudence, and industry,^ and these
were precisely the deficiencies which his gambling
habits would accentuate. They are the moral and
intellectual results of gambling, and follow it as
inevitably as gout follows wine-bibbing.
Those of us who fail to see any road leading to
a desirable state of society save the political one,
those who still believe that democracy is the only
form of government under which men can enjoy the
blessings of full citizenship, those who consider that
^ Early History of Charles James Fox, pp. 100-1.
• Cf. Martineau's History of Englaml, 1800-1815, p. 196 (Bohn's
edition).
126 BETTING AND GAMBLING
in spite of the likes or dislikes of ruling classes
government tends to depend more and more upon
the sanction of the common people and thus
becomes an ever more accurate reflection of their
character, can view only with alarm the rapid
spread of gambling habits amongst the masses.
Where these habits prevail the newspaper, which
should be the guide of the citizen, is read not for
its politics but for its tips, for the racing news
printed in the " fudge," not for the subjects it dis-
cusses in its leader columns, and so is degraded to
being the organ of the bookmaker. This does not
merely mean an extension of its sporting columns,
but a revolution in its tone and its staff, in response
to what really becomes a revolution in its functions.
Men who are too weary to think, too overworked
to attend political meetings or take positions of
responsibility in their trade unions, can neverthe-
less speak authoritatively about the pedigree of an
obscure horse and the record of a second-rate foot-
baller.
This, like all other backward steps to a lower
stage of moral effort, is easy. For social conduct
is the inheritance of complicated experiences, re-
tained only by sleepless vigilance, and exercised
by the subordination of the individual will to the
social conscience. It' is therefore comparable to
those high forms of chemical compounds built up
of many atoms but exceedingly unstable. The
simple presence of a disturbing element shatters
the compound and reduces it to its primitive atoms.
Man's self- regarding and primitive instincts are
GAMBLING AND CITIZENSHIP 127
constantly threatening to disjoint his social char-
acter and defeat all movements depending upon
that character for their success. To hope, for
instance, that a labour party can be built up in a
population quivering from an indulgence in games
of hazard is folly. Such a population cannot be
organised for sustained political effort, cannot be
depended upon for legal support to its political
champions, cannot respond to appeals to its rational
imagination. Its hazards absorb so much of its
leisure ; they lead it away from thoughts of social
righteousness ; they destroy in it the sense of social
service ; they create in it a state of mind which
believes in fate, luck, the irrational, the erratic ;
they dazzle its eyes with flashing hopes ; they
make it, in other words, absolutely incapable of
taking an interest in the methods and the aims of
reforming politicians. They lay it open to the
seductions of the demagogue, to the blandishments
of the hail-fellow-well-met type of candidate, to the
inducements of the common briber, to the flashy
clap-trap of the vulgar and the ignorant charlatan.
And the discovery that such classes exist in the
community will very soon be made, and the whole
tone of public life lowered to suit their tastes. It
is not without serious significance that in recent
elections one of the most common forms of argu-
ment (sometimes used by both sides) has been an
offer by the candidates to back up statements they
had made by sums of money. " It is not so much,"
says Loria, the eminent Italian sociologist, " the
personality of the elected as the character of the
128 BETTING AND GAMBLING
class which elects that really counts." I do not
say that this is to lead to rapid and irretrievable
ruin. Rome bore the burden of a luxurious and
gambling class of citizens for centuries. But I do
say that the spread of the gambling habit is one
of the most disquieting events of the time for those
particularly who believe in self-government and in
an intelligent democracy using its political power
to secure moral and social ends. Every labour
leader I know recognises the gambling spirit as a
menace to any form of labour party.
Til
I have, finally, to consider what good citizenship
has to say to gambling, and how it proposes to deal
with the matter.
We must remember that this, like so many
other vices, is only a degraded and degrading form
of expressing a natural human need. Indulgence
in gambling is universal in primitive society, where
it is closely associated with religion, and at no time
is it absent from the larger and more absorbing
transactions of civilised life. It is intimately con-
nected with the dominating type of will and the
unflinching determination of men to control. The
gigantic strides which the United States have made
in industry have been possible only because the
Americans have not flinched in facing enormous
hazards. This spirit finds apt expression in the
verse of that romantic embodiment of the love of
hazard, the Marquis of Montrose —
GAMBLING AND CITIZENSHIP 129
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who does not put it to the touch.
Or gain or lose it all.
In the evolution of the race an important part
has no doubt been played by the men and the
communities whose self-confidence was sufficiently
strong to enable them to make large drafts upon
the unknown. Abnormally and respectably — as in
the form of genius — this spirit gives us " the man
of destiny " ; abnormally but not respectably — as
in the form of burglary — this spirit gives us the
high criminal. Normally, properly controlled and
toned, it gives us the successful man of business,
the leader and inspirer of men. This playing with
the unknown in the faith that the fates are favour-
ably disposed has undoubtedly been, and is still to
be, a very important spur to energy, and one of
the determining factors in national survivals in the
future. Indeed, it is inseparable from human nature.
Men will not tolerate a uniform drudgery, they will
not live in a world which is nothing but a feature-
less expanse. And this intellectual appetite for risk,
for projecting one's self on to the silent stream of
fate upon which the barque of life mysteriously
floats, must be satisfied either legitimately or illegiti-
mately, either in accordance with sound morals or in
the teeth of sound morals. The latter will be the
case if we condemn, as we do now, large sections of
our population to conditions of life from which their
intellectual nature can get no satisfaction. The
appetites of that nature will not die away. Its
K
130 BETTING AND GAMBLING
functions will not atrophy and degenerate. It will
simply accommodate itself to its circumstances. If
it cannot command the food of the gods, it will fill
its belly with the husks which the swine do eat,
and find a troubled satisfaction in its degradation.
" To be confined in the dark, or without occupation,
is to be made the victim of subjective tedium," says
Bain.^ We have confined our people in the dark,
and they are gambling to break the tedium.
Consequently, when we consider the responsi-
bilities of citizenship for the spread of the gambling
disease with a view to devising some cure, we shall
have to begin by assuming that prohibitive Acts
will not carry us very far. We can stop book-
makers or their agents receiving bets in the public
streets or any public place ; we can turn them off
race-courses and refuse to recognise any enclosure as
sanctuary. We can even go further, and prosecute
any one who receives from another betting pay-
ments on any event whatever. This last would be
going very far — too far, perhaps, to be practical.
But at any rate we could prohibit the receipt of
money from children. We could also stop the
publication of betting news, and our Post Office
could refuse to transmit circulars encouraging the
gambling appetite.^ We might even combat success-
fully the much more difficult problem of how to
prohibit gambling at church and chapel bazaars.
^ Mental and Moral Science, p. 229.
^ A somewhat dangerous extension of the powers of an intelli-
gence-carrying agency, and one which should not be made if it can
be avoided.
GAMBLING AND CITIZENSHIP 131
But, when we have done all that, we have not gone
very far. We have simply restored life to its old,
dull, monotonous drab, and we have turned the
natural instincts which the gambling habit satisfies
from feeding at one trough to find husks in another.
To the great mass of the people we shall but appear
to be smug Pharisees, and a reaction will set in
which in its aggressive strength will play much
greater havoc than even the steady growth of the
disease before it was challenged. Time after time
the failure of the reform campaigns of outraged
respectability in America has taught this simple
lesson in moral politics. One cannot devastate and
then say, " Behold the good ! " The gambling habit
must be elbowed out, not stamped out.
I would be exceeding the purposes and limits of
this paper did I attempt to sketch a programme
of reforms which in my opinion would do the
elbowing. I can only indicate the skeleton of such
a programme, and I do so, not so much to urge my
readers to accept it, as to emphasise that the attack
upon the gambling habit can be successful only if
it is positive and constructive, and not merely
negative and prohibitory.
When we try to get to the root of our social
vices of to-day we ultimately find ourselves con-
templating the sad effects of the steady stream of
population away from the green meadows on to the
grey pavements. Overcrowding in the towns and
dilapidation in the villages are the result. At best,
under existing conditions there must always be a
fringe of our city population living from hand to
132 BETTING AND GAMBLING
mouth, contracting the character of the casual and
the loafer. But this fringe is made much broader
by the present urban immigration ; the tarnished
threads in it are of finer quality than they would
be otherwise, and the original excellence of some
of its stuff makes it all the more prone to vices of
certain kinds. The problem which good citizenship
has to solve then, it seems to me, is twofold. It
has to discover how people can be induced to stay
on the land, and how, in towns, they can be pro-
vided with proper surroundings. The only hope of
a rural population in England is the spread of
intensive cultivation and of co-operative agriculture,^
and that again can hardly become general until our
present system of landlordism is broken up and
public authorities own the land and let it to suit
the convenience of cultivators.
The town problems must be solved by a com-
bination of public and private associated effort. We
must give up all hope of private owners being able
to supply decent houses at reasonable rents. The
municipality should become the sole housing autho-
rity within its own area, and where it spreads out
its arms of tramways beyond its own boundaries it
should be able to develop building estates on its
lines of communication. "With a housing and tram
policy should be combined a recreation policy, for
it is the lack of recreation in modern city life which
leads to so many vicious indulgences. Parks, music,
museums, libraries, hardly touch the needs of the
^ Cf. Krapotkine's Factories, Fields, and Workshops ; and H.
Rider Haggard's Rural England,
GAMBLING AND CITTZENSHTP 183
workman no longer on the sunny side ol" thirty-tive,
wearied after a day's work. The public-house or
the workman's club is his resort.
Here we come to the centre of our difficulty.
We cannot meet the needs of the average workman
who is not a teetotaller unless we place the public-
house under public control. This seems to me to
be the first step, not only towards national temper-
ance, but towards the provision of that rational
amusement which is to protect our industrial
population from vicious allurements.^
But when all these facilities for an intellectual
life have been provided, they will be in danger of
being neglected unless the people who are supposed
to benefit by them are led to pursue worthy human
ideals. The appreciation of the worthy is an inward
quality. Here we come to the saving grace of
political convictions, the purifying effect of citizen
ideals. An immunity from anti-social indulgences
depends upon the general diffusion through society
of an active desire for social improvement by demo-
cratic means. This acts in two ways. It first of
all quickens the social conscience and the moral
pride of the common man, and it also safeguards
him from imitating the vices of the worthless upper
classes, which, without the opposition of a strong
democratic spirit, become the models for the recrea-
tion and amusement of the masses.
Hence, turning once more for a moment to con-
sider the causes which have led to the present
^ Cf. Rowntree and Sherwell's The Teinperanee Problem and
Social Reform, especially pp. 560-587.
134 BETTING AND GAMBLING
slackening of moral fibre, I find one of the most
important to be the loss of the democratic fervour
which characterised the people during about three-
quarters of the nineteenth century. The people
have lost taste for politics. The generous enthu-
siasms of 1848 are criticised by the aged youth of
our schools to-day as having been over-sentimental
and mere dreams. At any rate, they gave us sound
literature — Tait's Ediiiburgh Magazine, Chambers's
Papers for the People, Cassell's Popular Educator ;
they laid the foundations of a most important part of
democratic education in the Mechanics' Institutes ;
they gave birth to a self-reliant generation of working
men. Until citizenship, radiantly setting out towards
the splendour of a perfected humanity, attended by
a train of the beatitudes which the heart and mind
of man have been ever seeking, commands the
allegiance and the services of our people, the crowd,
obedient to the necessity to worship imposed upon
it by its nature, will bow to false gods ; and men,
obedient to their intellectual promptings to dally
occasionally in the temple of Fortuna, will do so in
the gross, the only, way which is at present possible
for them.
EXISTING LEGISLATION
By John Hawke
When the intelligent public has become convinced
of the existence of a great social evil, it wants to
know, in the first place, what laws are in existence
which can be applied in remedy of it, and what
amendments of the law are needed.
The text-books upon the present laws, through
no fault of their authors, are somewhat obsolete,
owing to recent not altogether consistent decisions
of the Courts, although Laiv Relating to Betting, by
G. H. Stutfield, and Law of Gambling (Coldridge
and Hawksford), contain much valuable information.
The following summary is intended to present a
skeleton view of the legal position at this date,
and for sake of convenience the subject is divided
under the two heads of Miscellaneous Gambling
and Betting. Whichever portion of the subject is
treated, it will be observed that the laws are both
inadequate and not fully applied.
Miscellaneous gambling must be subdivided into
(M) all kinds of individual gaming unconnected with
trade; (N) gambling in the stock, produce, and other
markets.
1S5
136 BETTING AND GAMBLING
Miscellaneous Gambling
M. Individual Gaming unconnected loith Trade
(a) Illegal Games. I (e) Press Competitions
(b) Card Playing. and Coupon Gam-
(c) Playing with Gaming- j bling.
Machines.
(d) Lotteries and Sweep-
stakes.
(/) Gambling Clubs.
(g) Petty Gambling.
(a) Illegal Gaines ; (b) Card Playing. — The old-
time absurdity of making certain games illegal,
because they were the ones chiefly used as vehicles
for gambling and left little room for skill, seems
to have resulted in throwing upon the Courts the
difficult task of deciding what other games come
near enough to this class to share their disabilities,
and to have culminated in shaping the law in a
direction very unfortunate for public morality, so
as to present a modicum of skill as a sufficient
leaven to create immunity for a very large element
of chance. The gambler avoids, as a rule, the
named illegal games and turns to others. Black-
stone remarks upon his infinite shifts and the
varieties of his expedients, so that to pass laws
especially applying to some games only merely
drives him into other courses.
The true principle is that no game in itself is
illegal, but that the gambling upon it may be.
While the present laws make special regulations
and enforce specific penalties upon certain games,
others which may easily be as noxious cannot be
dealt with. Consequently we have spasmodic and
EXISTING LEGISI^TION 137
partial attempts to enforce the law, and a series of
enigmatic and conflictincr decisions in the Courts,
resulting in a chaotic state of affairs in which little
check is put upon gamblers.
(c) Playiiig ivith Gaming - Machines. — Notwith-
standing that roulette is an illegal lottery, it is an
unhappy fact that of late years it has been much
more played than formerly. An inspection of
tradesmen's catalogues, and a glance round the
departments at the stores, tends to confirm the
impression that it and like games are becoming
much more common. A member of the Bar who
many years ago took the silk gown, and who was
known to be averse to gambling, although going
a good deal into society, has noticed how often the
green cloth appears not long after dinner, sometimes
after a postponement until he and those of like
mind are about to leave. Its public use may have
been put down, but in private houses and in clubs
the roulette - table has multiplied its numbers.
Here again, in connection with gaming- machines,
corruption has spread and gone lower down. The
automatic machines, at first used for the sale of
sweetmeats, have been altered so as to be made the
vehicles of gambling amongst the poorer classes,
and especially children. They have already done
irretrievable harm. Investigating the subject in
the East End of London, the writer of these lines
was told by a responsible person that they had
taken such a hold upon the young that, while in
classes of poor boys comparatively little difficulty
was found in obtaining pledges not to drink and
138 BETTING AND GAMBLING
smoke, much reluctance has been evinced with
regard to promises to give up petty gambling.
Upon one occasion a bright boy flatly declined to add
such a pledge to others, saying that he could not give
up the excitement of using his coppers in this way.
Most of the police prosecutions have been success-
ful, and fines have been imposed under sec. 44 of
the Police Act ; while the machines were without
hesitation pronounced to be illegal upon licensed
premises. It may be hoped that the latest decision
in Fielding v. Turner in the Divisional Court will
go far towards stopping their use for gambling, now
that they can be confiscated. So serious a matter
had they become that the Home Secretary has
promised to strengthen the law if need be. But
the eagerness with which the temptation they offer
has been responded to by the poorest of children
should be a warning to the authorities against the
old looseness of interpretation in the matter of laws
against gambling. For children, at least, the old
nonsense about skill and chance should be entirely
swept away, and severe penalties enforced against
all those who tempt the young in this manner.
If not, the growing generation will be worse in
gambling than the present one, and instead of a
nation with a large minority devoted to the vice,
it will develop into a general habit in which the
majority are involved in one form or another.
{d) Lotteries and Sweepstakes. — Lotteries are
matters of pure chance, which have been gradually
restricted by a long series of statutory enactments ;
and in 1823 the last form, that of the public
EXISTING LEGISLATION 139
lottery, was abolished, the sole remaining exception
being the ones connected with Art Unions, which
have since been discontinued. Lotteries were
found to be debauching the public and affording
opportunities for fraud, but have not been wholly
got rid of, as they are still carried on in connection
with charity bazaars and in the form of sweepstakes,
chiefly held upon horse-races. These latter, when
subscribed privately and in clubs, are winked at
by the authorities, but fitful prosecutions against
publicans and others are heard of from time to
time. Bazaar raflles, "fish-ponds," etc., are no less
illegal lotteries than sweepstakes under the Lottery
Acts ; they come within the provisions of 1 2 Geo. 11.
c. 28. It has, unfortunately, become customary
for the authorities to take no action when raffles
are held for charitable purposes, but all the churches
of late years have been condemning the practice,
and it is coming to be looked upon as a disreput-
able one, so that the law might now be enforced
without any serious confiict with popular sentiment.
It should be enough for clergy and ministers, how-
ever, to know that in the strict eye of the law
those who have anything to do with bazaar raffles
are rogues and vagabonds, if this is necessary to
supplement the consideration that true religion
must lose more than it gains by proceedings which
have frequently involved the first step taken by
the young in the paths of hazard, and led them
into a career marred by misery if not crime. The
existing statutes do not give the Post Office
authorities sufficient powers for the detection and
140 BETTING AND GAMBLING
destruction of lottery matter ; and the protection of
newspapers advertising lotteries by 8 »& 9 Vict. c. 74,
making the fiat of the Attorney-General necessary
for prosecutions, is considerably abused.
(e) Press Competitions and Coupon GamUing. —
This is a most serious branch of the evil, for which
the press is very largely responsible. Its grossest
manifestation occurred some years ago in connection
with horse-racing and football playing. Unfortu-
nately, some years prior to this, in 1895, a judg-
ment in Stoddart v. Sagar, the scope of which was
mistaken by the public authorities, was held to