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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5886, 18 July 1890, Page 2

Two years ago tho House of Representatives allirmed tho desirableness of putting a tux on tho totalisat&r, not for the purpose of suppressing- or limiting the operations of the unclean machine, but with tho object of raising revenue from tho vices of the people. There would have boon nothing inconsistent in doing so. Gambling is qui'.o as vicious is drinking, and imbibers of strong waters and smokors of tobacco luivo to pay dearly through tho Customs for their luxuries. The more people drink tiud smoke, the greater the revenue. A heavy duty ia levied on pucks of playing cards, dice, &c, which uro mere instruments of gambling with some, and of innocent amusement with others, and that ia all that can bo said of tho totalisator. It has pleased Parliament to inako illegal all kiuds of gambling except that which takes the form bo familiar on every racecourse, and considering the enormous profits made by thoso who run tho machine, we do not see why the rovenue should not share them. One cliib alone in Hawko's Bay last racing season derived an income of £2370 as its share of the profits from investments in the totalisator, while l-\ percent, from the total amounts passed through the machine went to tho men who worked it. Iα this provincial district racing clubs and totalisator proprietors re»p at least £Soo_o a year from this peculiar system of gambling, and why they should not in their turn bo mulcted of 10 per cent, of their unholy gains for the bent-lit of the country wo are at a loss to know. The Chancellor of the Exchequer acknowledged in his last Budget that tho revenue of Great Britain had been increased by a couple of millions that year throng 1 the extra quantity of rum that had been consumed by the people, Nobody was greatly shocked by the announcement, but horn iv Xuw Zealand, where all tho old Puritanical laws against Sunday trading re in full force, where common gambling . squelched under the heel of the polioe,

"we have the monstrously inconsistent spectacle of the legalisation of a brutaliaing ■vioe on the one hand, and of a Government too righteous on the other to profit by the wickedness it has created.