THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1877.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2544, 2 March 1877, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1877.

A tjibt sensible idea is embodied in the advertisement which appeared in yesterday's issue with reference to a prospecting party for the northern part of the goldfield, including the long stretch of country from Tararu to Manain Bay. The advertiser is a practical miner of experience, and is quite willing to become one of: the party, being confident that if a fair trial were given to that part of the goldfield it would result in the discovery of something important. We have in the past frequently urged upon the business people of the Borough the advantages which might accrue to them from the organization of prospecting parties. The indications which have been found in the back country behind the Borough and Highway Districts have been most encouraging, and in many instances they have been such as to point unmistakeably to the existence of gold bearing reefs at no great distance. The Otonui Block has found favor in the eyes of more than one goldfields surveyor of experience, and the country wow proposed to be explored is rich in reefs containing large quantities of base metal, while alluvial gold of a rich quality has been found in some of the Creeks. We hope that not only the prospecting party advertised for but many others will be started, and considering how much the Thames and Auckland are dependent upon the mining industry it would be worth a trial to start a combined movement for a systematic and co-operative prospecting tour before the winter comes upon us. All authorities now agree that the future of the Thames depends mainly upon the back country, and any movement having for its object the exploration of that country, in whatever direction, deserves encouragement.

It may be we are a nation of gamblers. It has been said so of us, just as it has been said that we are a nation of shopkeepers. The wofd "we " here used, is meant to stand as a pronoun for the Anglo-Saxon race. Either remark is true in its kind, and perhaps the former is a consequence of the latter; in other words that allowing the term gambling to be used in -a very wide sense, trading or shop-keeping is in some degree allied to it. It need not follow of course that all shopkeepers are gamblers, any more than it need follow that all gamblers are shopkeepers, but the same principle, viz., the desire of gain—to gain a livelihood is the more respectful as well as the more conventional way of putting it—animates both the gambler and the shopkeeper. The gambler will take a long shot at some dark-horse he fancies, and risk his sovereigns in hopes of their producing a hundred fold; the shopkeeper will very often buy stock on the chance of the demand rising, and in the hopes that he will be able to make a greater percentage than usual. Each calculates probabilities, each has to consider the. doctrine of chancea, and both are sometimes the victims of these. A non-starter heavily backed is no more ruinous to the turf speculator than is a sudden glut in the market of those goods he has been heavily purchasing to the storekeeper, or a sudden and increasing fall in the shares he had bought at -par to the stockjobber. i The primary difference between the two, gambling and trading, is this, that the one springs from a desire for excitement, which, once gratified, increases yet more ; the other more from a desire of increasing those means a man already has. They may be termed the Alpha and the Omega, the first and last links in the longing after wealth. The one tries to accomI plish the end by one or more bold coups, the other by a more steady though slower course, having,.however, the same object in view.. In each line men are successful and unsuccessful, and some fitted well for one path would be nowhere in the other. As various as are men's characters and dispositions in life, so are they by nature fitted more or less for one of these two walks, or those which lie between them. It will be seen here that we have only aimed at describing the extreme links of the chain. Society has set its face against gamblers as being more or less dishonest, though there certainly are honest and upright men among them; and the same society generally sets its face against over cheap traders, on the same principle that it dislikes shilling gloves, viz., that they are often " takes in," or dishonest if you will. The question is, how much of this gambling is justifiable. Justifiable, that is, as not being immoral. Gambling is forbidden in certain places, although it can be shown that no dishonest practice took place. At Dunedin lately the .Resident Magistrate has taken what seems to us a very wide view ofgambling in the matter of billiards. He has decided that if two friends play billiards in a licensed house, on the conditions usually observed in this part of the j world, viz., that the loser pays for the table, the owner of the said table is guilty of allowing gambling to take place on his premises. . The decision is, we hear, to be appealed against, but that at. present is the decision, and, no doubt, if more cases are brought before the B.M. to decide the punishment in each instance will be

greater thau the nominal fine which, this being the first case of the kind brought before him, Mr Bnthgnte has seen fit to inflict. Coming to analyso the question, there really seems to be nothing .more hurtful in a custom which decides that the loser of a game has to pay the amount due—the same being trifliug-—than there is in. that which allows a man to spend a sura of money in buying articles on the chance of gaining by their sale, or the reverse. In fact playing a game of billiards with anyone on the understanding that the loser pays is pretty much the same sort of thing as betting a shilling each on the.game, although,the winner simply gets back his own shilling, the other shillling being regarded as an equivalent for the amusement he has had. The Magistrate may be right as far as the letter of the law goes, but surely such a law is one which demands alteration as an encroachment on what has been so often termed " the liberty of the subject." It seems on the face of it absurd that two men cannot add to the pleasure they feel in playing a game of billiards by staking a shilling on the result— which- shilling, very likely, neither of them cares much about — without being stigmatised as gamblers, while others are permitted to carry on " business," in which the principle of gambling just as largely exists, with impunity. We are far from defending gambling, but we like to see thing 3 called by their proper names, and if the net of the law is to be spread to catch and punish tho luckless one on whose premises a sixpence or a shilling, even though he know nothing about it, he staked, it ought to be made to enclose those who under different names have a large proportion of the same spirit existing in them.