Should Mr. Green accede to my proposition, he only has to name his time and place—or if he prefers to have a personal interview, he can do so. I am willing to wait on him at his boarding-house, but would like to have at least one respectable person present to hear all that passes between us.
J.G. FREEMAN.
N.B.—I am a native of South Carolina; I am known from Virginia to Orleans. Mr. Green I have seen in that city, and he no doubt recollects me, though I never had any intimacy with him.
We publish below another communication from Mr. Freeman, in which he announces that Mr. Green has accepted his challenge to debate, and lays down his points for argument. We are glad of this, and have no doubt the public will share in our curiosity to know what kind of a defence can be made by a gambler, even so polished as Mr. Freeman, for a vice fitly characterized by Mr. Green as "fifty per cent. worse than stealing." Expectation is on tiptoe.
Communicated for the Sun.
Mr. Editor—I return to you my sincere thanks for having kindly published my letter to Mr. J. H. Green, the reformed gambler; and beg leave now to state to you, that I have had an interview with him, and that he fully consents to go into the debate. It now devolves upon me, since I have assumed the character of plaintiff in the action, to define minutely the exact points to be discussed.
The first position, then, that I shall assume, is that all those states in this Union that have enacted very severe laws against gambling, such as making it a penitentiary offence, &c., have acted both tyrannically and unwisely—tyrannically, because they are an infringement upon those sacred reserved rights that never were yielded in what law commentators call the "social compact"—and unwise, because their tendency is to generate immorality rather than stop it.
The second ground that I shall take, is that the character of that class of beings called "gamblers" is less understood by the community at large, and especially by that portion of it that have had no intercourse with them, than any class of men in the world. That it has ever been the misfortune of the gambler to be misrepresented, not only of late by Mr. Green, but generally by those that have attempted to portray his character in the prints.
I shall undertake to show him up in his true character, making it neither better nor worse than it really is—"Let justice be done if the heavens fall."
In the third place, I shall propose to prove beyond question, that cheating at cards is decidedly the most unfortunate thing for the cause of gambling and gamblers, that possibly could exist. And on the other hand, that it is the very saviour of that portion of mankind who have a sneaking fondness for play.