GAMBLING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8885, 23 May 1892, Page 3

GAMBLING.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,l scanned the effusion of your cor» respondent " Father" with mingled feelings; feelings of sorrow at his scathing and uncharitable denunciation of "Parent," who, as he states, wrote "apologetically of the vice of gambling," and somewhat of gladness at the fact that " Father" deplores the curse of gambling. It may be said of your correspondent, " Father,' " Physician heal thyself," seeing that he has, by his one-sided reasoning, placed himself in a grotesquely strange and incongruous position in that he admits his association and sympathy with card-playing, which, in like manner with horseracing and other forms of gambling, has, he must admit, claimed as its victims multitudes of the weak, ignorant, and undeveloped, the major portion of whom never intended at the outset to play for money. As a student of and sympathiser with human nature, I have met with a few who have associated themselves to the end, moderately as they call it, with drink and cards. I have also seen a multitude, and who has not? who, by their insane lust (inherited in many cases) for drink and gambling (card playing included) have gone down, down, down, with the torrent of infamy and disgrace. I have little sympathy with any one, " Father " included, who in such sarcastic and condemnatory terms rates another, whose motives, even though erroneous, may, for aught we know, be as noble and exalted as our own. " We none of us know one another, And oft into error may fall. So let us think well of a brother, Or think not about him at all." The world is too full of the various forms of evil, the result of human weakness and ignorance for men worthy of the name to occupy valuable time in writing to the press and applying uncharitable insinuations. Let " Father" be practical, and give us a remedy for the vices he professes to deplore, or, if he has none, let him spend his spare hours more nobly and profitably than in card-playing, even if not for'stakes, in elaborating and diffusing a scheme tor the betterment of the human race. The world never required whole-souled and noble workers more than it does at the present moment, willing to engage in that most truly noble of all human work, of bringing about a solution of the great social, religious, and political problems of the day. I honour Mr. Berry for his outspokenness in reference to the glaring gambling and other social evils, which, with that gentleman, I recognise as being a standing menace to society. Still, the method suggested for the uprooting of the evil is today just as inoperative, as a means to an end, as it ever was. For proof,_ look around and everywhere. The gambler" and card-player, the vicious snd profligate, the drunkard, larrikin, and selfish, are diseased in their physical, intellectual, and moral natures, and cannot, therefore, be frightened into the paths of right and rectitude by pulpit throats, based upon superstitious dogmatism. The whole question is a purely scientific one, and will admit of no solution other than a wise and scientific education and legislation.—l am, &c., Liberty.