It will not be out of place here to recount the heroic and magnanimous (?) zeal which Col. Jason B. Brown displayed in our behalf in due time. Some three weeks after our incarceration he made his appearance at the penitentiary and requested an interview with us. He did not leave us long in ignorance as to the object of his visit. He told us that old Deputy had been in debt to the amount of about $6,000 before that unlucky day, when, at one fell swoop, he lost both his $3,000 and his confidence in mankind. “If,” said the Colonel, “Mr. Deputy’s debt could be squared up, I could arrange to have you pardoned in about ten days.” This generous proposal being “declined with thanks,” he suggested $3,000, and later $2,000 as a sum the payment of which might at once convincingly prove our penitence and measurably solace Mr. Deputy under his existing weight of misfortune. Finding his mission fruitless he left us, but subsequently opened a correspondence, in the course of which he offered to accept $1,000, which sum he gradually reduced to $300, as the price which we were to pay in consideration of being pardoned for an offense which we had never committed. These letters, of course, were read by Mr. James Patton, the warden of the prison, who advised us to have nothing to do with Col. Brown, inasmuch as he was quite as likely to oppose our pardon as to champion it.

Meanwhile, requisition papers had been obtained from the Governor and sent to Detroit by Sheriff Byrnes. The Detroit authorities showed great vigilance. A watch was placed upon the houses in that city where the families of the guilty parties resided, as well as upon their accustomed haunts. The result was that one night in November, 1887, Stewart and Rice were arrested at their homes and Mason at a gambling hell. Although a messenger was despatched to Rice to warn him of the impending danger, the police were on the alert, and he was brought to headquarters within a few hours after his confederates. Sheriff Byrnes was notified and went to Detroit at once. For five weeks the rascals fought extradition in the courts, and the sheriff was offered $1,000 to drop the prosecution, an offer which he indignantly spurned.

While in jail, the prisoners were photographed. Rice was obstinate and had to be held during the operation, in consequence of which the picture obtained showed him with closed eyes and open mouth. Poor as the likeness was, however, it was recognized by no less than ten persons as that of the man who had stopped at the Snodgrass House in North Vernon on the day when Deputy had been victimized. The other two were easily identified, and Stewart was recognized as the man who had boarded at that hotel for a week preceding the crime. When the Detroit court finally directed the surrender of the prisoners to the Indiana authorities, there ensued an attempt to rescue them by force, but the officers succeeded in placing them in a wagon in which they were driven to the Indiana State line. Albert Boebritz, a detective, and James J. Houston, a deputy sheriff, both of Detroit, accompanied the party to Brownstown.

The best legal talent of the State, including such eminent advocates as United States Senator Dan Voorhees and John Lamb, of Terre Haute, were engaged for the defense. The trial was had in January, 1888. The accused were positively identified by twenty-three reputable witnesses, among them all the members of the Snodgrass family. The fact of their driving out of town on the morning of the day of the robbery with two of Burge’s teams, was also established, and a liveryman from Kentucky testified to their having hired a rig from him.

It grieves me to say that the aged Deputy and Colonel Jason B. Brown did not appear in a favorable light in connection with the investigation. Relying upon the assurance that the nature of his evidence should be kept secret, the old farmer went before the grand jury and identified the men then accused, virtually admitting that he had lied while giving his testimony at our trial. It was also learned afterwards that the unsophisticated old man, under the tutelage of the astute Col. Jason B. Brown, had received from Stewart and company $1,000 not to appear as a witness against them at the trial, and had been promised the remaining $2,000 of his loss immediately upon their acquittal. Kerns, Forbes and myself were brought from the penitentiary to testify that we were not within the State at the time the crime was committed. Upon our parole to accompany the officers quietly and make no attempt to escape, we were permitted to go without hand-cuffs in custody of Deputy Warden Barnes and Mr. Lemons, one of the guards. At Brownstown we were kindly treated, occupying a private room in the sheriff’s house.

After the case of Stewart, Rice and Mason had been submitted to the jury and that body had deliberated for thirty-six hours, a ballot showed eleven for conviction and one for acquittal. Finally the jury returned, announcing that an agreement was impossible and they were discharged. It was understood that the final vote was nine to three in favor of conviction. Sheriff Byrnes had predicted a disagreement from the first. He had himself been offered $500 if he could induce the court to reduce the prisoners’ bonds to $1,000 each, and afterward said that he had learned that Philip Davis, one of the jurors, had been promised $300 and an increase in his pension if he would “hang” the jury. It is unnecessary to state that the sheriff rejected the offer, but the judge, Collins, saw fit, of his own motion, to make the desired reduction. The prisoners then gave bail and fled the country, their bonds being declared forfeited at the next term of court.

The officers of the penitentiary now took an active interest in securing our release. A strong petition for pardon based upon the allegation of our innocence, was addressed to Governor Gray and was endorsed by Senator Voorhees and John Lamb, counsel for Stewart, Rice and Mason, who not only wrote to, but also personally called upon, the executive, Governor Johnson of Missouri, rendered invaluable service in securing favorable action upon the petition. He demanded, not clemency, but justice. He had sifted and weighed all the evidence bearing upon the case, and he spoke with no uncertain sound. Words such as his, prompted by the deliberate judgment, unerring instincts and warm heart of one of the greatest criminal lawyers of the Mississippi Valley, could not fail to carry weight. The result was inevitable. The executive of the State in whose so-called courts of justice we had suffered such a grieviousgrievious wrong, restored to us our liberty and citizenship by his pardon. But to remove from us the stigma of the felon, to atone for the weary months of suffering which we had undergone, in a word, to put us back where we were upon the morning of that day when we first became entangled in the machinations of that diabolical plot,—these were boons which even this great seal of the Sovereign State of Indiana could not bestow.

In a private letter written by Governor Johnson some months ago in reference to this matter he says:

Of my prison life I care to say but little here. Not that my memory of it has grown indistinct, or that I might not say something that would awaken interest. To dwell upon it in detail in this place would swell to too great dimensions a sketch which has already outgrown my original intention. It is enough to say that I was what is known as a “good” convict, respectful in my demeanor to the officials and yielding unhesitating obedience to every command. I think that I do not exaggerate when when I say that I won and retained the confidence of the officers, from whom I received every kindness compatible with the necessarily inexorable discipline of a penal institution. I shall always recall with gratitude the generous words of encouragement repeatedly spoken to me by the warden and his deputy and by many of the guards, and notably from Messrs. Miller and Wilkinson. In the solitude of my workbench and cell I had ample leisure to reflect upon the follies of my youth, and the graver offences of my maturer years. My wasted life, with its miserable vacillation of purpose, passed before me in all its shameful reality of color. While cleaning out the rubbish from under my bench one day, I picked up a battered Testament, upon the fly leaf of which were written the words, “From your broken-hearted wife.” The entire sacred volume contains no more touching epitome of a blighted existence than was laid before me in this inscription, with its pregnant suggestion of early love, girlish confidence, marriage, womanly love, home, perhaps paternity, crime, misery, punishment, and, at the end, the despair of a broken heart. But I do not intend to moralize. It is enough to say that within those four stone walls in which I passed so many sleepless nights, and behind that grated door which so effectually barred all communication with the outer world, I felt the first emotions of what I still believe to have been true penitence. To prove it such shall be the aim of my future life. Acting under these newly found impulses, I became the teacher of a Sunday school class, and was one of the ten convicts who founded, under the supervision of Chaplain Bornhill, a Young Men’s Christian AssociationAssociation within the prison walls. I was made assistant librarian—under Mr. Martin, a lifetime prisoner—and entrusted with the writing of a considerable proportion of prisoner’s letters to their friends.

I entered the penitentiary on Sept. 19, 1887, and just two months afterwards I received the most severe blow of my life. It happened on Thanksgiving day. On the recurrence of anniversaries such as this, one’s mind naturally reverts to thoughts of home and kindred. On this particular day I was lying upon my prison bunk, lost in a day dream of my wife and child, when my musings were suddenly broken off by the abrupt announcement of the death of my darling, my only, boy. The shock of the awakening was too great for me to endure, and I fell senseless on the stone pavement of my cell, nor was I able for days to realize the overwhelming force of the blow that had stunned me.

I have already said that my wife was with me during my trial at Brownstown. She also visited me twice during my imprisonment in the penitentiary, and on both occasions had expressed unshaken confidence in my innocence and had assured me of her unswerving fidelity to her early love. Very precious to me were these pledges of undying constancy, and on my part I had vowed that not even death itself should ever abate my love for her. Her letters, down to April 15, 1888, overflowed with tender sentiment. She gently chided me for even seeming to question her devotion to me in my hour of darkest need. It may conceived, therefore, with what mingled emotions of astonishment and grief I received from her, on May 5, the following letter:

This blow, following close upon the death of my little boy, well nigh prostrated me. I saw that I was also to lose my wife. Only the Searcher of all hearts knows the depth of my affection for the mother of my child, since whose death she had seemed doubly dear to me. The thought of her had been, next to my newly found trust in an all-merciful Providence, my main-stay amid the misfortunes which had engulfed me; and when I had thought of my release from prison (and at what hour of the day did I not think of it?), I had looked forward to her affectionate companionship as the only refuge and solace of my earthly life.

I well knew on what grounds she would demand her divorce. The State of Indiana had branded me as a convict, and this was enough, in the eye of the law, to release her from a yoke which she had come to regard as galling. Defence was impossible. Nor did I hope to be able to move her heart by entreaty. Yet I could not forbear to write to her once again, even if only to say farewell. As this last letter of mine embodies my inmost feeling at the time, I venture to hope that the reader who has honored me with his interest up to this point of my narrative may pardon me if I transcribe it here. It ran as follows:

I was pardoned November 9, 1888, and two days later, when the long hoped for document reached the prison, I was discharged. I was at liberty, but carried in my heart a double desolation. Not for me did the sun shine and the face of Nature smile. In a cemetery at St. Louis was a little grave that held the sacred dust of the being once dearest to me on earth, and in my heart I carried the tomb of a buried hope.

My foreman in the prison shop, Mr. George H. Eastman, welcomed me to liberty, and invited me to his house, where I was most hospitably entertained for a week. I next went to St. Louis, but remained only one day; long enough to gaze once more at the home where I had last lived with my wife and child, now gone from me forever. A sense of utter loneliness came over me; the world seemed strange; my identity was all that I could call my own.

From St. Louis I came to Chicago, where I sought out my old friend and quondam partner, Ben Demint, whose warm greeting was a cordial to my heart, and under the influence of whose genial encouragement I began to look upon the world as not altogether lost.

Two objects were uppermost in my mind. One was to prepare and deliver a lecture, in which I might demonstrate my innocence of the crime of which I had been convicted; the other was to publish a work on gambling, through which I might, by exposing the cheats and frauds of the professional gamester, deter others from entering upon the path “whose gates take hold on Hell.” My first lecture was delivered in the auditorium of the First M. E. Church, at Chicago, on the evening of Monday, May 20, 1889. My book (the present volume) is before the public.

The fact that I was contemplating issuing the present volume became known to some members of the “profession” in Chicago a year ago, and on June 27, 1889, about ten o’clock in the forenoon, I was arrested by detectives Kehoe and Flynn, without the shadow of a charge having been preferred against me. For five hours I was deprived of my liberty. What a commentary upon the nature of the relations existing between the “profession” and the custodians of public morals.

In this connection I desire to return thanks to John Cameron Simonds, Esq., and Mr. Matthew W. Pinkerton, of Chicago, for their generous intervention in my behalf. To their kind efforts I owe my speedy release.

During my lifetime I have thus far been called upon to mourn the loss of father and mother, three brothers—Dick, Robert and Victor—and two sisters—Laura and Roma. Of eight children, but three of us survive, George Sidney, who still lives in Randolph County, Missouri, where he was born and reared; Hatsel Seldon, at present at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and myself.

To the press of Chicago, which so kindly encouraged him in his early ventures in the lecture field, the author desires to express his grateful acknowledgements. Unknown and friendless, he felt the timidity incident to one inexperienced in public speaking, and who carried in his breast the knowledge of his own past wrong-doing. But the journals of the city in which he made his maiden effort, those leaders and exponents of public sentiment, sustained him, and their words of commendation imparted to him fresh courage.

I hardly know how better to close this recital of a part whose shameful recollections might well overcome a stouter heart than mine, than by the following quotation from an old verse-writer, which have long floated through my memory. They present, in homely language, a truth which strikes a responsive chord in the heart of every man who is not panoplied in serene satisfaction with his own virtues. The lines run as follows:

The foregoing illustration presents, in a form calculated to strike the eye and impress the mind, a view of the gradations in the downward career of a gambler.

Starting out, with high hopes of pleasure to be derived and wealth to be gained through a life devoted to the ruin of his fellowmen, he boldly enters upon the way whose end is death and whose steps “take hold on hell.” Costly is his attire and elastic his step as he at first ventures upon the road whose path is a quagmire and whose downward course is beset with thorns.

As he advances, he finds the declivity growing steeper; his feet are sore and his raiment torn. Too late he perceives his error, and realizes that it is far easier to descend than to climb the tortuous, slippery path. The illusion is dispelled; the glamour has gone out in darkness. No longer the jovial, roystering, “hail-fellow-well-met,”—he has become the midnight prowler, dependent for his very subsistence, upon the scanty earnings which he derives from the percentage doled out to him by more prosperous members of the same villainous craft for betraying the confidence of his friends and luring the unwary to their destruction. He realizes his situation, only to curse it; he would retrace his steps if he knew how, but his chosen sin holds him with a grasp as close as the coil of the deadly anaconda.

In the figure of the forlorn tramp, a destitute, penniless wanderer, a pariah and an outcast, we see him approaching his wretched end. The pitiless storm that beats in his face is but the sighing of the summer wind as compared with that which rages in his breast. The wind that howls in his ears seems to chant the requiem of home, happiness, hope, honor,—all that men hold dear. And yet he must go on; on, into the blinding sleet; on into the unknown future; on, until he reaches the Potter’s Field; on until he stands before the bar of God.

Certainly it can be no mistake to call such an one a “fool of fortune,” a fool enslaved by his own degraded instincts and besotted passions, a fool who, in the words of Scripture, “has said in his heart there is no God.” But professional blacklegs are not the only “fools of fortune.” The young man, just entering upon the path of life; the middle aged man of family, who squanders at the gaming table the money which should go to buy luxuries, comforts, perhaps even necessaries for those dependent upon him, the old man, who, about to sink into the grave, finds it impossible to overcome the fascination of the vice which has reduced him from affluence to penury—these, one and all, are fools. The savings of a lifetime, dissipated in an hour, the cherished hopes of years blighted by the turn of a card—these are every day occurrences in the hells where one class of fools worship “Fortune,” and another class delude themselves by the belief that it is possible for money dishonestly acquired to bring with it anything but a curse.

It is with the hope that those who have not already entered upon this course may be deterred from entering upon it and that those who may have already tasted the false pleasures of an unhealthy excitement may be induced to pause before it is too late, that the author has made his frank confession of his own follies and his revelation of all the secret arts of the gambler’s devil born art.

Only gamblers defend gambling. Those who play faro, roulette, hazard; those who buy mutual pools or “puts and calls;” and even those whose instinct for gaming is satisfied with a partly legitimate business, go on with their practices without an analysis of their actions. It is the object of this work, not only to trace the history of gaming, so far as is recorded, but to expose to the mind of the most casual reader the sophistries upon which the art of gambling is based. In other words, the author will show that if men seek for happiness in games of chance they find sorrow; if they hope for gain, they fall into penury; if they flee from care, they suffer unending perplexity; if they be honorably ambitious, they forfeit all public regard.

It is a sad fact that ethics—the science of human duty—had reached its summit long before the Roman Empire was founded. The philosophers of Africa and Asia taught to the students of Greece all that this work can teach to English-speaking people. Aristotle classed the gambler with the thief and robber, and so just was the mind of Alexander’s preceptor, that he hated even usury. If man studied ethics, with any other purpose than for mental relaxation, there could be no gambling; there could be none of the gross selfishness and competition which shames our civilization, and in reality gives to the barbaric spirit of conquest that relief which it finds in gambling.

We have, then, only to repeat the warnings of the sages of the world, and to reinforce them with the history of the gaming vice in all ages. Thousands of years have elapsed since man learned that gambling was morally wrong. Why, then, does he gamble? Because he does not know that all wrong is a source of unhappiness. No man wishes to be unhappy. All men are unhappy; they seek peace. In the fact that argument has failed to carry home to the human mind this conviction, that gaming cannot give peace, the author finds his reason for writing. Only by patient iteration of the principles which Aristotle accepted, and only by a persevering recital of the evils which gambling has wrought on men, can it be hoped that the young student will accept as a truth, without personal proof, that doctrine which, to prove, would cost his fortune and his happiness.

Why, then, is gambling wrong? Why did Aristotle denounce it? Why does the young man of to-day need further proof that gambling is wrong and disappointing—why does he lose years of time, hazard his respectability, acquire dangerous habits and diseases, and regret the experiment he has made? To answer these questions requires this volume.

Blackstone cleverly calls gaming “a kind of tacit confession, that the company engaged therein do in general exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes; and therefore they cast lots to determine upon whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer.” This statement, which has stood the criticisms of centuries, leaves to the gamester the unhappy knowledge that some one in his company is to be destroyed. Instead of sitting at an entertainment, then, he is a pall-bearer. He carries away the dead because he himself is not dead. To begin, therefore, the gambler who thinks must have throttled pity. He knows it is a funeral; he is so selfish that he cares only for his own welfare. When two or more men gamble, the winners win and the losers lose, but there is no productive labor; therefore, nobody profits except it be the owner of the premises who has put his building to an unproductive business—a business closely allied with other vices that at once rob their agents of honor, health and fortune. Commerce, when flying almost in the face of nature, will, if successful, benefit man and alleviate his needs, but the gambler spends his time and his energies in that which (as this work will carefully show) is of enormous evil. It is more than a waste of time. It is more than a waste of money. It is more than a waste of health. It is more than a waste of thought. For gambling, as Charles Kingsley has said, is almost the only thing in the world in which the honorable man is no match for the dishonorable man. The scrupulous man is weaker, by the very fact of his scruples, than he who has none. When a man begins to play he may have a high feeling of honor, but what right has honor to sit at a gaming-table? There’s the rub. When he wins he will consider it folly not to extend the hours of play, and will begin an expense that he did not indulge before. With greater expense, he will be keener at the game—more zealous to win. But he will lose anon, and further anon his losses and gains will be equal. Then his increased expense—the luxury of late hours, with dinners, carriages, and personal service—must be paid from the income that was deemed insufficient to support a more modest mode of life. As this manifestly cannot be done, recourse in hope must be had to the gaming-table once more, where, with losses and gains so far equal, the increased disbursements must be made good. To win, the tricks of the gambler must be used; friends must be inveigled to their ruin; advantages must be seized; a sight of the opponent’s cards must be used for whatever it will win, and one step after another gradually reduces the player to a condition in which he secretly knows he is a rogue. Others about him have long known it. The true philosopher knows it the moment the “high-minded player” sits down to the game.

But ignorance does not depict a scene so deplorable. The gambler in his best days, is lured by a brighter vision. He does not value money, and gathers that reward which comes from a princely generosity and a reckless patronage of all who desire to serve him. But of real humanity he has none, because his business, veil it as you may, is robbery. The man who plays against the gambler is called a “producer,” and what can that mean but fool or victim—a victim whose greed is his ruin. Despising respectable men who play with him as greedy fools, the gambler must oppose honest men (who will not play) as foes. Hating all men, he must hate women; therefore marriage is rare among the “profession.” If he secures a fortune, so that he may “retire” from hazard, it will be seen that he owns and enslaves both men and women, and never aids the emancipation of society. Sensualism and materialism are his characteristics. If he loves power in his community, it is for private aggrandizement. The hand of society has been against him; he cannot forget it. Reform would be forgiveness, and the gambler never forgives. True respectability would be forgetfulness of the past, and the gambler never forgets. Such is the successful gamester—the “retired gamester.” And to secure that much of success how many thousands of victims are in his train? His charities are a sham, like the subscriptions of Monte Carlo on Riviera; like the proffered relief to flood sufferers by the Louisiana lottery. While the wail of the unhappy and the lost is heard at the wheel, the cruel game goes on without mercy. The very existence of these splendid dens of dishonesty and inhumanity, are a menace to men.

But success in this crime is as rare as success in any other. The ordinary gambler does not “retire.” He dresses extravagantly, he lives in ignorance, he pursues the existence of an ape. The mere sensualist sins and repents, but the reformer who toils with the drunkard and the fallen woman despairs of the gambler. He lives his short life, and dies alone in his garret or in prison. His fellow-gamblers are glad he is dead. They say he was unfit to live, and they know.

Of all acts, gambling induces most often to suicide. It is believed that the number of “the profession” is not relatively large considering the total population, yet the suicide of the professional gambler is a matter of the most frequent note. In England eight persons out of 100,000 kill themselves in a year. At Monaco, a solitary gambling establishment, one hundred suicides were reported in one season. The German tables of play have sent thousands out to death. The reason why a gambler should kill himself appears to him in the aspect of lost honor. If he joins to this a loss of money—the only thing for which he has striven—he cannot summon fortitude to live. He goes out of the world, impelled by a just nature, that thus removes his life from the earth which he has encumbered.

The strain of gambling is a sharp one. It breaks the nerves and prematurely ages the face. Losses, if they do not paralyze the mind, at least enrage it against circumstances and events, turning the man to a veritable horned beast, or to a poisonous serpent, bent on inflicting a blow though it be on its own body. The natives of India call this passion “hot heart,” or inner rage without vent. The revulsion has been severe to the extent of our conception. Fortune was near, nor is it far. The loser feels that fate is a sentient being—a hag whom he must tear with his nails. Her blow has been twice as harsh as if he had not hoped, and it falls on one ill-prepared to receive it. There lies but one escape, and that is death. Hence the excitement with which professional gamblers behold the loss of their means of livelihood. Where suicide does not follow, the most painful blows are often delivered by the gambler upon his own temples and forehead. He has no pity on himself for losing money that he ought to have kept.

Gambling is closely allied with forces which tend to the subversion of social order; it is directly conducive to various crimes of frequent occurrence. The gambling mania is at war with industry, and therefore, destructive of prosperity and thrift. Devotion to the gaming habit will in time hush the voice of conscience and is a constant menace to honor and happiness. Once possessed of the passion, an individual is lost to every sense of duty as husband, father, citizen, and man of business. His heart becomes the prey of emotions at enmity with affection and sound morality. In this condition, a man is unfitted for any responsibility requisite to the welfare of society. In spirit, if not in fact, he is an Ishmaelite—an outlaw; then, expediency is his only principle, and necessity his only law. In heart, at least, he is a criminal. As a result, the man is false to every confidence, recreant to every trust! Is this not true? Look about you and see! How many bloody tragedies are directly traceable to the gambling “hell?” How has this vice fed the mania for homicide, the tendency to suicide? The business world is rife with forgeries and defalcations, which may be directly ascribed to gambling. Widows and orphans are plundered by their trustees, corporations wrecked by their officers, one partner made the victim of another, the employer betrayed by his employee, all because of this terrible passion. But is this the end? Is it even the worst? In gambling, as in other forms of evil, are not the “sins of the father visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation.” It would seem so, if Dr. Ribot is an authority. Descending from sire to son, from ancestor to posterity, the vice enters into the very fiber of the soul. Ribot asserts of gambling, as of avarice, theft and murder, that the propensity is subject to the law of heredity; that the “passion for play often attains such a pitch of madness as to be a form of insanity, and like it transmissible.” And Da Gama Machado says: “A lady of my acquaintance, and who possessed a large fortune, had a passion for gambling, and passed whole nights at play. She died young of pulmonary disease. Her eldest son, who was very like his mother, had the same passion for play. He, too, like his mother, died of consumption, and at about the same age. His daughter, who resembled him, inherited the same taste, and died young.” Justified twice over, then, is society, in protecting itself against a practice so terrible, so deadly, so far reaching in its effects.

In course of time, this seems to have been realized by all nations pretending to civilization, whether ancient or modern. Whatever may have been the private practice of rulers and statesmen, in this respect, their public policy and legislative enactments were against gambling.

Some of the laws of the ancients against gambling are worthy of adoption to-day, and are well calculated to check the destructive evil. Amongst the Jews, for instance, a gambler could not act as a magistrate, or occupy any high or honorable office, nor could he be a witness in any court of justice. Such disqualifications, at the present day, would largely decimate the judicial ranks and deplete the government roll. In ancient Egypt, again, a convicted gambler was condemned to the quarries of Sinai, there to expiate his offense. Would not a kindred punishment, now, be effectual with the “genteel” gambler—with ye “gentleman” gambler of the gilded “hell” and “club house.” Yea, extended, even in a general sense, to all persons, whatever their position in life, convicted of the offense of gambling, would it not go far toward a reduction of this great and growing evil?

No where is the capriciousness and inconstancy of the ancient Greeks more manifest than in their policy toward gambling. Denouncing it in the abstract, they were universally addicted to the practice. At one time the object of legislative prohibition, with them, at another it would be granted a license, or permitted to flourish without “let or hindrance.” To the Romans has been ascribed a talent for political organization; a genius for jurisprudence. Strangely inconsistent, however, was their position on the subject of gambling. By the Roman laws, ædiles were authorized to punish gambling, except during the Saturnalia—a time when every passion was allowed to run riot. In other respects, the Roman law on this subject resembled that now obtaining in England and America. Money lost at play could not be legally recovered by the winner, and the loser could recover the money paid by him to the winner. Under the Justinian Code, according to Paulus, a master or father had a remedy against any person inducing the servant or son to play. This must have been a wholesome measure. Why may it not be on every statute book in the United States? The most radical feature of the Roman law, perhaps, was that by virtue of which a gambling house might be forfeited to the State, and this equally so, whether it belonged to the offender, or to another person cognizant of the offense. Had this Roman law of confiscation been some years since ingrafted on the law of each State in the Union, it may be a matter of speculative opinion, of course, how many “club houses” would have passed into the hands of the government.

If wagers did not violate any rule of public decency or morality, or any rule of public policy, they were not invalid by the common law of England. And such was the principle of law inherited by the English colonies in America, and recognized by the courts of the respective States of the Union.

In England, however, dating from the middle of the eighteenth century, a series of statutes has been enacted, aimed not only at gambling in stocks, but at all wagering contracts. In 1834, the well known statute of Sir John Barnard was enacted. This act was intended to prevent what it styled the “Infamous Practice of Stock Jobbing.” This statute was repealed by 23 and 24 Victoria, Ch. 28. By the act of 8 and 9 Victoria, Ch. 109, S. 108, “all contracts or agreements, whether by parol or in writing, by way of gaming or wagering, shall be null and void, and no suit shall be brought in any court of law or equity for recovering any sum of money or valuable thing alleged to be won upon any wager.” This statute is now in force. These enactments aside, the English courts were wont to reprehend such contracts, and frequently expressed regret that they had ever been sanctioned.

The authorities in this country are far from uniform on the common law doctrine; some leaning decidedly against wagering contracts. Others, on the other hand, have countenanced them. Such contracts have been sustained by the United States courts, and the courts of New York, California, Texas, New Jersey, and Delaware. In Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Pennsylvania, a wager was never a valid contract. Now, by the revised statutes of New York all “wagers, bets, or stakes, made to depend upon any race, or upon any gaming by lot or chance, casualty, or unknown or contingent event whatever, shall be unlawful. All contracts for, or on account of, any money or property, or a thing in action, so wagered, bet or staked, shall be void.” Similar, and even more stringent, legislation of like character, exists in Ohio, Iowa, West Virginia, Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Illinois.

In many states gambling is a misdemeanor only. Where this is the case, the gambler is allowed to prey upon the community at his pleasure, and compelled to pay only an occasional fine. In not a few of the states, however, the offense is a felony which may be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary. May it become the law in all the states. More than this, the penalty should not be an alternative between a fine or imprisonment. The prison door should be open to every convicted gambler, without hope of escape.

From all this it will be seen not only that gambling has long been denounced, and with good cause, as a great social evil; but that it has been an important object for legislation. It will clearly appear, also, that all laws, provisions and penalties have been ineffectual to suppress it, prevent its growth, or counteract its demoralizing influence. That gaming is an evil of the most pernicious character in society, no man can have the effrontery to deny; but a doubt may be reasonably entertained whether the propensity be not too strong to be controlled by law, and too human for any legislative enactments.

More than human wisdom and effort is required to master the ruling and inherent passion of universal man. Moreover, if the law is to successfully suppress public gambling, it must be by enactments falling with equal weight, and operating with just severity on all practitioners of the principle which it is the object of the law to discountenance; and not by measures protecting one class of offenders and punishing another; not by exempting those high in social position, while those of lowly estate are made to feel the heavy hand of authority. If at all, it is to be accomplished only by striking at the whole system of gaming, as far as the law can effect the object, upon one great principle, letting law go hand in hand with justice, in the work, so that it err not in the principle of its enactments or in the equity of its administration.