The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1892. Gambling

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 78, 20 December 1892, Page 2

The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1892. Gambling

♦- There is a strong fear in the minds of many of the wellwishers of the colony, that the vice of gambling is largely on the increase on all sides, and among all classes of the community. It is even urged that the ills already resulting therefrom are of even greater magnitude than those arising from the drink traffic. We do not recognise the necessity for the comparison. It is as much the duty of the guardians of public morality to combat the one as the other. Drinking is open and the sale of intoxicants is regulated by law and custom, but gambling is secret. Its roots have permiated the whole of our social system. Its universality is confessed or admitted as a generality, but few men will admit they are specific gamblers. It is because the attractions of certain consultations, or sweeps, have proved so strong that public attention has latterly been drawn so frequently to this form of gambling. Little or nothing has been said against other systems of gambling such as the Stock Exchanges of i the world, of mining speculations, of corners in grain, pools in cotton, syndicates for ruling the markets for copper or silver. These modes of \ gambling are on such an enormous scale that their magnitude compels respect, and ordinary mortals listeu , with awe to the talcs of sudden I wealth, or sudden financial ruin, and i whisper the names of the operators with bated breath. The desolation which may be wrought on the lower | strata of humanity is never thought ' of for a moment. When a great coa- i querer has slain his tens of thousands in a battle, and made hundreds ol thousands to mourn over the fathers, husbands, and sons, whose blood has been shed to fertilize some stricken field, the cry is one of praise or admiration. Only the bright side of the picture is looked upon, ail the rest is conveniently ignored. Ou the other hand let a robber or paid assassin, slay but oue man, and the all-power-ful hand of the law — tbat grand embodiment of the will of the people — is raised against him, and the vengeance falls with crushing force on his devoted head. We strain at a gnat aud swallow a camel. So it is with gambling. We admire the successful speculator, and condemn the unsuccessful one who " puts a pound on the machine " or invests a similar amount of money in a consultation. The spirit of speculation, or to call it by its more euphonious appellation, of commercial enterprise, has made the nation which encouraged its development in the greatest degree, the most prosperous, and perhaps, the most powerful. England, tbat nation of shopkeepers, has owed her high place among the nations as much to the desire to make money, as to the courage of her sons. " The cursed greed for gold " exclaimed against by Virgil is as powerful in our day as in his, aud if one may judge from the experiences of the intervening ages, it will continue so until the end of the | time. That gambling is as evil in whatever form it may appear, or how it may be covered or shielded by sophistry, few will have the courage to deny, but how to mitigate it is one of the most formidable problems ever attetupted to be solved. Money making and war would seem to be the two most powerful passions in our sinful nature, and to form a necessary part of our being for which we are irresponsible.