Mr. Green re-asserted that all he had stated about plans being laid to catch the unwary, by gamblers, was strictly true. He had been cognisant of plottings of the fraternity, and in speaking of some individual who was about to be plucked, the common expression among them was, "that he was not ripe yet." The remarks of Mr Green were listened to with great attention by the audience.
Mr. Freeman followed, and after briefly replying to the points of the previous speaker, said that it was his intention, at the next meeting, to prove that all species of speculation is, properly speaking, gambling.
The Rev. John Chambers concluded. He confessed his disappointment. He expected to find a man here who would attempt to defend gambling, but he congratulated the audience that no such thing had been attempted, Mr. Freeman having acknowledged gambling to be an evil.
The Reverend gentleman's remarks were of a general character, and in the course of their delivery he upheld the law of the state, and unsparingly denounced those for whose detection and punishment it was passed.
First Night, from the Saturday Evening Post.
The discussion on gambling, between Mr. Green the Reformed gambler, and Mr. Freeman, of the "Profession," which has been looked forward to with so much interest, opened upon Monday evening. The audience generally, however, were rather disappointed, inasmuch as Mr. Freeman stated that he did not come there to defend gambling, but only to prove the folly and injustice of attempting to put it down by making its practice, by professional gamblers, an offence punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary. But although Mr. Freeman made this avowal, he evidently did attempt in various parts of the discussion to defend gambling—not, however, as a thing good in itself, but as being no worse than many other practices which society tolerates, and which no man loses his reputation, or is in danger of imprisonment, for engaging in.
We have no scruple in confessing, that we were much interested in Mr. Freeman. He appears to be one of a singular class of men, some one of whom may be found in nearly every pursuit, however dishonourable—men of keen and subtle minds, and of as much goodness and honesty of purpose as is possible in the life which they have chosen, or into which perhaps they have been in a degree forced. In the course of his remarks, he made one allusion to his own history, which while it told as much as any thing that was said in the course of the debate against gambling, opened unto us, in a degree, the secret of his present position. He said that when he was a young man, he had lost his all at the gaming table, and that from that blow he had never recovered—"it had broken his heart." And yet, strange anomaly, he now not only makes his living by gambling, but stands up before the world as its defender.
But let us look a little further into Mr. Freeman's arguments. He did not state them very plainly, being evidently unaccustomed to public speaking, and, as the English say, to "thinking on his legs," but if we are not mistaken, he reasons to his own heart as follows. Gambling in cards is not right abstractly, but it is the same in principle as gambling in stocks, in breadstuffs, in merchandise, in land, or in any thing else. None of these are right, but they are necessary fruits of the folly and wickedness of men, and inevitable in the present condition of society. "I make my living, I know," he probably says, "from the weakness and wickedness of my fellow men; but so do the physician, the judge, the lawyer, the jailer, and the hangman." If we are not mistaken, in this way does Mr. Freeman make out a clear case to his own conscience; and to some small extent he is right in what he asserts. To gamble with cards is the same principle as to gamble with stocks, or any thing else—the difference is only one of degree; but although the gambler and the judge both live, in a certain sense, off of the vices of their fellow men, the difference is very evident between him whose business conduces to increase those vices, and his whose noble office it is to lessen them.