THE CHURCH AND THE TOTALISATOR.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4860, 9 March 1887, Page 2

THE CHURCH AND THE TOTALISATOR.

■ ■ +.. '■ [SPECIAIi TO DAILY TELEGRAPH.] [OWN CORRESPONDENT.—BY TELEGRAPH.]

Dunedin, Last night. The_ Rev. Mr Ktchett, preaching on turf morality, said at a recent meeting on tho Dunedin Gup over £29,000 passed through the legalised gambling machine. No doubt this amount, including the same stakes, was passed through many times over, but if we take into account the betting in other forms it would probably run up to scores of thousands of pounds. Add together the money gambled on all the racecourses in the colony, and we get a result truly appalling, and probably not far short of a million exchanged in betting transactions on tho New Zealand races in a single year. Surely this is ii fact which challenges attention. Everyone is concerned for tie thrift, prosperity, and moral health of the people. How has this passion for gambling been viewed by lawmakers ? Invariably it has been regarded as a public evil_, which, though from the nature of the case it could not be eradicated by legislation, ought to be severely repressed. Yet ovv own Legislature, whilst enacting statutes for the suppression of the evil, and authorising the hunting of even heathens domiciled among us for gaming in their dwellings, has sanctioned with weak—and one may. venture to say, wicked—inconsistency, the use of a machine for unlimited public gambling. The picture, an excited crowd gathers round the totalisator, pushing, struggling, shouting, and screaming ; each man fighting his way to the front and holding out at aim's length his pound to the keeper of the gambling machine. What is the impulse common to the whole frantic multitude? What is the passion in the breast of each ? Simply a desive for other people's money. Each man risks his own pound, but he risks it in the desire and hope that he will get it back again, with many other pounds out of the pockets of his neighbors. Some who indulge in it are doubtless of high principles and probity of character. They gamble a little for the pleasure of the excitement, and think no evil. Let each man consider what gambling in its essential nature is, and it can hardly be that conscience and honor will not constrain them to slum it as an unholy thing. Respecting race course gambling there can be no doubt at all, and every man with a regard for elementary morality and the well being of society is bound to discourage it. He defended raffling at a church bazaar, because the persons got an equivalent, and concluded with an earnest appeal for the formatiou of a society for the suppression of betting. The Times urgos that war-ships should visit Port Chalmers oftener.