SWEEPS—RACING AND OTHERS.

Evening Star, Issue 4096, 12 April 1876, Page 2

SWEEPS—RACING AND OTHERS.

To the Editor.

Sib, —Whilst agreeing in the main with your excellent article on gambling, I am at issue with you on one or two points which seem to demand further consideration. You draw a moral distinction between' gambling as practised by the promoters of racing sweeps and gambling for pious and charitable purposes—a distinction which you will perhaps permit me to say is illogical. Would you draw the same distinction between larceny or any other offence committed for private purposes, and larceny for the benefit of a church ? I think not. That which is contrary to the Law and to morality is as heinous in the one case as it would be in the other. Indeed, more so. The horsey gentlemen who patronise racing sweeps.do not make any pretence of piety; but the people who institute raffles for church purposes do so in the name of religion. That is to say, under the guise of rendering service to the Deity, they suffer, encourage, and promote the pernicious vice of gambling, against which same vice they loudly declaim from the pulpit. To this latter class may be commended a beautiful passage of a beautiful prayer uttered more than eighteen centuries ago by a despised Nazarene—“Lead us not iuto temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I am not one of those who consider that the end justifies the means ; on the contrary, I hold that more harm is done by one church bazaar raffle than by many racing sweeps. For why ? It is difficult to convince the minds of men that the thing which is openly done by Christian priests and pastors can bo wrong in itself; and I have good reasons for believing that more than one of those “ junior clerks ” of whom you make mention has received his fijst lesson in gambling, and taken his first downward step, in bazaars conducted under ti>o auspices of Christian ministers, aided and assisted by the winning smiles and seductive glances of young damsels, who themselves are thereby taught to regard the

sin of gambling as an inoffensive, and under some circumstances, a meritorious thing 1 Sir, if our religious institutions eannotbo maintained except by the adoption of illegal and unmoral practices it is tune they were closed. No infidel or atheist over penned a sarcasm on the Christian religion more severe than is conveyed by the corrupt practices tolerated in Church bazaars.—l am, &c. ( Akti-Sophist,