Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers' Gazette, With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, October 19, 1905. THE BISHOP AND THE TOTALISATOR.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 815, 19 October 1905, Page 6

Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers' Gazette, With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, October 19, 1905. THE BISHOP AND THE TOTALISATOR.

In the course of his charge, delivered to the members of the Synod a few days ago, Dr. Neligan, the Anglican Bishop of Auckland, spoke very strongly against the vice of gambling, and at the same time levelled some severe charges against the totalisator. “ Gambling,” he is reported to have said, “must offend the social law, must contradict the principle of the brotherhood of man, must run counter to all that makes Democracy a

thing worth having, it must thus happen because essentially it makes the appeal to undiluted selfishness. Her belt Spencer and Mr. Martineau, two thinkers of wholly opposite religious points of view, condemn gambling as being, per se, a violation of the social law. Pagan governments of old, not concerned with the religious or moral aspect of the question, as we understand it, recognised the social offence, anil legislated accordingly. It has, apparently, been reserved for the most democratic part of the British Empire, New Zealand, to exhibit to the world a democratic Government legalising, and receiving revenue from, the most abominable machine that ever was invented for turning out citizens who care more for selfishness than for socialism. The legal existence to-day of ike totalisator in this democratic country is about as glaring a contradiction of true democracy, of genuine socialism, as one could well find. Let me give you some facts which will justify that allusion. The number of permits to use the totalisator is fixed by statute at 156, and in twelve months—August, 1904, to July, 1905— 284 days’ racing were held in the colony. Ten per cent, is deducted from all moneys going through the totalisator, of which. 1 ’ per cent, goes to. the Government. The total sum put through the totalisator in New Zealand for the period named amounted to £1,391,422. A very considerable additional sum would be handled by bookmakers laying totalisator odds.

“ The amount of money that passed, through the totalisator for the year I have quoted is £lO,OOO greater than the value of the export butter trade of the colony for 1904—£1,380,460. The Government received from the totalisator, for the year quoted, a sum of over £20,000. Furthermore, the Government offers facilities for betting and gambling, through the post office. Practically every racecourse of note in the colony has the telegraph; money can be sent on to the course for ‘ investment’ by means of the Government telegraph office; the homes of the colony are brought into direct and immediate connection with the totalisator through the Government telegraph office. lam informed that the Government telegraph office is so keen on getting business in this method that ‘ on one racecourse in the North Island,, when it was deem d inadvisable (for certain club reasons) to have a wire, arrangements were made by the Department to connect with a building in close proximity.’ “ The machine has not at all suppressed the bookmaker, nor has it wholly stopped the publication of betting odds in the newspapers. For myself,” concluded Dr. Neligan, “ 1 would far sooner see the. bookmaker plying his trade openly (hehas to be honest), and the attendant barrier put to people because of ‘ what people would think if they saw us making bets with a bookmaker,’ than the existing state of affairs.”

The Bishop’s remarks on the subject are well worth recording, in that he claims to speak as a sportsmen as well as a clergyman. Unfortunately, he has fallen into the common error of mistaking cause for effect. It cannot be too strongly pointed out that it- was because of the large amount of gambling which was carried on that the totalisator was introduced to regulate it, and that it is not because of the totalisator that the gambling is so extensive. Gambling in all shapes and forms existed long before the totalisator was ever even thought of. It prevailed to an immense extent in the days when Rome was in its zenith, and all through the ages it has flourished. Being inherent in human nature it will continue to exist long aftei- we are all dead and forgotten. What the totalisator has made plain is the extent of it, for the totalisator, having nothing to conceal. has its figures made public. This leads to the incorrect supposition that it is the machine which is the cause of a supposed increase, whereas it is but the-

indicator. An immense amount of gambling exists in other forms, and if it were possible to publish the statistics, as is the case with the totalisator, we should be up in arms against nearly every form of business venture to-day, that is to say, if we were consistent, which is not always the case. Dr. Neligan is evidently of the opinion that New Zealand is alone in its use of the totalisator, whereas it may be pointed out that every State in the Commonwealth, with the exception of New South Wales and Victoria, uses it, and that many of the leading men of the two States now exempt are endeavouring to introduce the machine with a view of restraining the very evil which the Bishop thinks it has brought about. We do not make these remarks in any spirit of cavilling, for there is much in the Bishop’s charge with which we are in entire accord, and all sportsmen appreciate a manly utterance. All such will be with the Bishop when he says:—“ I deprecate labelling men as thieves who are not. I have no heroic measures to propose in the way of bringing about the millennium through the act of the Legislature. A moral evil can only be corrected by moral methods. The limits of legislation are reached, in matters moral, when the Legislature has used every effort possible to make it inconvenient and difficult for moral evils to flourish. To produce such inconvenience and difficulty we have a clear right to demand of the Legislature. Further ,it is not true to count every man who attends a race meeting as a rogue and a vagabond; nor every man who ‘plays whist for penny points’ as a gambler. Be sportsmen,” he concludes, “ play the game instead of counting the money; because you are sportsmen fight for cleanliness at your race meetings, your golf matches, your billiards, and rubber, and keep your business methods moral.”