GAMBLING.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 270, 31 October 1916, Page 2

GAMBLING.

IS IT ESSENTIALLY IMMORAL? EXAMINED FROM THE PULPIT. (Contributed.) After introducing his theme Mr. Pratt said: — THE DRY-ROT OF INDUSTRY. (;..mMin« * 6 al&o tho dry-rot of indust.y anl cat* /‘‘m? ciples that make Wo». k \lient to /t bonourab.e. H is an expC™ 1 ™ money without working for •?’ Cbeif" Justice, Sir Robert Stout, ue_ dares that “gambling is sapping th*, foundations ot our industrial and civil life.” The proper mode of acquiring wealth is by intelligent industry. Industry is service, and upon reciprocity of sei’vice society is founded. This age affirms that gain without labour —that is, without service—is unjust. The economic problem to-day is to apportion reward to desert. That problem it is which has put the industrial system on its trial. The gambler’s gams are not for any service rendered. Hence, gambling desecrates labour, and begets a disposition to rely less on honest work than on chance to acquire wealth. Little wonder is it that the late Sir Joshua Williams said that “gambling is the deadly foe of industry and thrift, the close ally of idleness and dishonesty.” In this and many other ways gambling is essentia.ly injurious to society. As morality is founded upon social relations, the ethical quality of our acts may be tested by their social consequences —that is, by their tendency to promote the happiness dr the misery of those around us. Tho true bond of society is the love that shows itself by sendee. Love will not lightly inflict injury. It will not strike a bargain that leaves one party with nothing. The avowed aim of tho gambler is to gain without giving auy fair recompense. He is swayed by the avarice which snaps the bond of brotherhood, and sacrifices others to self. Gambling thus exalts the doctrine of individualism, of which unworthy thing tho most pernicious form is probably found in sweepstakes and totalisator combines, in which tho few appropriate, without merit or effort, the wealth that, the many have amassed. Gambling is a denial of tho, universal law of love, sympathy, pity, forbearance. It destroys all chivalrous feeling, kills the social consciousness, and tends inevitably to social disaster. GAMBLING AND INSURANCE.

It is frequently urged by the superficial thinker that the insurance of one’s life or property is a gamble. A little consideration will show that insurance, as Mr. Holt Schooling affirms, is the reverse of gambling. A risk that is intentionally created is of the essence of gambling. But tho risks to life and property are here to start with. We do not create, but we have to pieet these elements of risk that loom so largely in human life. The very purpose of insurance is to make provis ion against these inherent risks, and to avert tbe direct consequences of unfortunate eventualities. Insurance, which is based upon strict mathematics and grounded in sound business principles, averages and equalises the burdens that we must necessarily bear. The operations of building societies are sometimes held to constitute gambling. It is sufficient to answer that no shareholder in any such society stands to lose. Chance only enters to determine the order in which every member shall draw the prize he pays for.

SOME OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. Sometimes the assertion is made that gambling for small stakes is not wrong. Morality, however, is not a question of large or little, but of right and wrong. Gambling has a moral significance apart from the amount of the stakes. The moral quality of the act is not effected by the size of the bet. Its essential immorality is independent of the bigness of the interests involved, or of the extent of the harm it works to society. That a tiger is small does not alter its nature, nor does a theft, or a lie, or an act of impurity become allowable be cause it is only a little one. The evil may be reduced, but it is still present. The plea that gambling is not immoral if one can afford it is in rea.ity the specious arguthent that circum-* stances alter cases. It makes morality a question of wealth, and not of right. Virtue is not a matter o f affluence or poverty, but of right and wrong; not a question of money in the pocket, but of principles in the heart and life. Superfluous cash can never justify wrongful expenditure. What is wrong for a pauper cannot be right for a plutocrat. That a , man can afford it does not make the maintenance of half a dozen mistresses a moral act. Such a plea as we are dealing with would justify all riotous living. Some claim the right to do as they like with their own. Such freedom society cannot concede. No man has the moral right to employ his possessions at his own caprice. Society denies freedom to the owner of money when the exercise of freedom works ruin to life and character. That the partners to a gambling transaction consent to the risk is no defence of the practice. A fatal duel involves manslaughter, despite the mutual acceptance of the ; risks. That two consent to do a wrong thing does not make it right. The subtle suggestion tlmt v bea the i proceeds of a gamb.e beuelit a worthy cause the position is altered is an application of the vicious argument that the end justifies the means. Society, however, does not condone the theft of leather; even though it be to make boots for the poor! A wrong act is not justified if it incidentally helps a good cause.

A DAMNING INDICTMENT. The foregoing considerations prepare us to focus into one paragraph a heavy indictment against gambling, every count in which is demonstrably true. Gambling exercises an unhealthy fascination. It unfits for intellectual iufttrests and for the efficient discharge of life’s duties. It leads to lawlessness, is the public mother of crime, and fosters rapacity, fraud, deception, embezzlement and such vices. It draws to questionable company. It ministers to the innate selfishness of human nature, destroys tho sense of honour, diminishes true self-respeclL dissipates all the finer feelings and works tragic deterioration of character. It depraves its devotees. It damages society and defiles the fountains of national life. It inisuses-property, destroys the stewardship of wealth, demoralises commerce and diverts money from its legitimate uses. It debases trade, destroys industry, discourages thrift and desecrates labour. It disrupts friendship and tramples upon trust. It desolates the home, degrades family life, devastates the hearts of women and despoils the lives of innocent children. It predisposes to suicide and evokes such outbursts of murderous fury as led to the Flemington tragedy of a few years ago. It forgets love, and God, and the Judgment. It is the negation of reason and the contradiction of religion. It demonises the heart, deranges the minds, drugs the conscience and damns the soul. True patriotism calls for a combination of pulpit and of press, of people and of Parliament, to combat, and, so far as possible, to extirpate this great national vice.