NEW BALLOON ASSENT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 705, 22 October 1875, Page 3

NEW BALLOON ASSENT.

—o— Writingof sweepstakes on the Melbourne Oup, and Ihe inequalities of the laws relating to gambling, a Victorian correspondent of a contemporary says :—“I do not know how your laws affect the betting fraternity, out here they are most ridiculously incongruous and unworkable. .For instance, I am not prohibite I from betting on credit, but I mnsu’t pay my bet. I may play ecarte, whist, unlimite 1 100, poker, five up, besique, in the Penny-a-Liners’ Club ; but I'ata pounced upon if I spread props on the table of the “Three Pewters" for a drink ! Our Legislature is, in fact, tho Sir Forcible Feeble of the by-gone comedy'. Sound and fury, aigrrfying nothing. It cannot put down Pak ah-pu ; it yawns at early prostitution, and it doesn’t see any immorality in a member of the ’ouae availing himself of his position to make a penny in any way he can ; but in the meanwhile the police department costs money’, and somebody must be taken up, so they prosecute a halfstarved Chinaman carpenter for planing a bib of cedar in his closed shop on Sunday, contrary to the Act of Charles the Second ! J. J. Miller, one of the longest-tried of our Melbourne book-makers, has tor years carried through L 2030 sweeps on the annual Melbourne Cup. It is not too much to say that the subscribers are highly respectable people in the main, and that “it is by'r.o means a disreputable thing to hold a ticket. But the existing Act will not permit any g unbUng except for works of art* The Upper Gnulburn Hospital announces a lottery of L 2590, the prizes being caskets containing “most useful works of art,” viz., sovereigns ; and J. J, Miller has a sweep on the Cup, which he calls a balloon ascent, the prizes being his observations taken at an altitude of whatever the amount maybe! Is not this poking fun at the administration of the law with a vengeance ? The Chinamnn laughs at us in a good-liumored way, and says : “ Ah, S'preme Court no good ; Johnny go to House Lords.” And so he will if ever an important decision goes against him.