Sporting & Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers' Gazette. With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, July 30. 1903. THE TOTALISATOR IS TO STAY.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 699, 30 July 1903, Page 4

Sporting & Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers' Gazette. With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, July 30. 1903. THE TOTALISATOR IS TO STAY.

A strong majority of members of the Legislative Assembly has decided that the Totalisator shall remain, and those gentlemen who voted in its favour are to be cordially congratulated upon showing such sound common sense. Mr Ell, in moving the second reading of the Totalisator Abolition Bill, said there . was nothing in the Bill to explain, and if he had added that there was also nothing, to admire, his words would have carried more conviction than they did. No doubt this gentleman means well in his efforts to suppress the totalisator, but he falls into the all too common error of mistaking cause for effect, and also in thinking that it is possible to alter human nature by legislation. The natural instinct of the race is to gamble in some form or other, whether it is in stock or shares, house lots or mining scrip, and racecourse betting is only a form of it. Hark away back to the beginning of time, and the self-same characteristic was to be found. Archaeologists will tell you that in any of the recent excavations, no matter whether those of the time of that mighty king of the dim past, Ramases 1., or in the comparatively modern time of Pompeii, proof is abundantly forthcoming that various forms of gambling existed, and so it has continued down the long centuries to the present day. So it will continue to exist as long as human nature is human nature. Through all the past centuries there has been a perennial supply of faddists who have had their little say against gambling, but, like all others who have feebly tried

to stop a universal law, they have successively passed away into| nothingness, while the gambling instinct remains with us.

Mr Ell and those few who voted with him would do well to read what took place in the House of Lords a short time * ago, when that ill-advised and ill-framed measure known as the English Betting Bill met its timely fate. The Earl of Durham’s expressed the views held by all reasonable men on the subject. He said the Bill was drastic very offensive and needless, a typical example indeed of the methods of faddists, which were must vexatious and tyrannical. The supporters of the measure were trying to turn a natural human instinct into a crime. Lord Newton urged that the evils the Anti-Gambling section wished to remedy were best remedied by recognising and regulating betting. Just so, and these are exactly the reasons any broad-minded man would urge in favour of the retention of the totalisator in New Zealand. If by suppressing the totalisator it was at the same time possible to completely put a stop to gambling . then nothing could ba urged against the Totalisator* Abolition Bill, but 4 no one, unless suffering from dementia, could for a moment urge such a preposterous supposition. It is pleasing to read that Mr Ell’s ;measure was negatived by an overwhelming majority, the Bill indeed scarcely provoking any discussion. Silence was always the best method of showing contempt. It is greatly to be desired that no more silly and futile attempts of the kind should be undertaken by these wellmeaning but misguided faddists to undo all the good which has been effected by the wise legislation of the past. At present the totalisator is honestly and efficiently conducted, and the moderate profit from it is devoted to improving the sport and its appliances. Nobody wishes its opponents to gamble in this way if they prefer any other method, but it would be well if these worthy individuals would try to realise that their efforts to interfere with the rights and wishes of other people only cause much needless exasperation to the great majority of their fellow citizens, and at the same time achieve nothing. If, however, it is absolutely necessary for them to be meddling in affairs, perhaps it would not lie altogether amiss to take to heart the words of the Great Preacher, and “ first cast out the beam out of thine own eye.”