If the force of absurdity can go beyond this, then “it can go anywhere and do anything.”
The facts are in a nutshell. Either Y, when he threw his card up, abandoned his hand, or he did not. If he did, and if that is an act of play which establishes a revoke, then he revoked; if he did not, he had merely to say so, cadit quæstio; the card is an exposed one—“just that, and nothing more.” Only we have one, or rather two little difficulties to get over. Does abandoning the hand establish a revoke? and, if it does, is the decision authoritative—that is to say, of compulsory obligation?
Who the original decider was, or who gave him authority to make a penal enactment in the teeth of Laws 58 and 73, I do not know. All I do know is that the decision must not be fathered on Clay, for his case 8, “A has revoked; his claim of the game and throwing down his cards must be held as against himself as an act of playing,” is not on all fours; it occupies much firmer ground.
Here are two well-matched decisions, “Silence is an answer.” “Throwing down the cards establishes a revoke,”—of course, with the proviso that one has been made—both strain the law; both entail the revoke penalty; the only difference is that one is in the ipsissima verba of Clay, the other is a mangled excerpt; if the strong one has been quietly and surreptitiously burked, why, in the name of ordinary patience, does the weaker survive?
If decisions are retreating all along the line to a safer standpoint on the letter of the law, well and good; only tar them all with the same brush, and take some means to let the public know it.
Before the lamented demise of the Westminster Papers, disputed points were argued at length; whether in the number of counsellors there was wisdom, or whether too many cooks spoiled the broth, in either event we heard both sides. Question and answer could be found together, and if the decision did not invariably commend itself to our intelligence, we at any rate knew what the decision was, and that was the main point; but now our position has changed greatly for the worse. The present practice of Whist—a direct incentive to gambling—is this; whenever any doubt arises, instead of being able to lay their hands upon the recorded decision and settle it at once, the parties concerned first make a bet of one or more sovereigns and then write to the Field. On the ensuing Saturday afternoon a certain amount of money changes hands; two people are wiser, but the increase of wisdom is confined to themselves, and at the very next table the same process is repeated; while numerous quiet, well-meaning people like myself, who never bet, never know anything at all; for such answers as these, “X. It is a revoke,” “A. S. S. You cannot call on Z to pass it,” partake very much of the nature of Valentines in that, however interesting they may be to the recipient, they arouse no corresponding emotion in the world at large.
Lastly, with regard to the authority.
Whist-players are law-abiding to a degree, and sufferance is the badge of all their tribe; but still they would like to know how the authority obtained what the imperfect Member for Northampton is so fond of calling his mandate; whether by divine or hereditary right, by competitive examination, by election, by appointment from the Crown, or whether he sits upon us by “the good old rule, the simple plan” of force majeure as the Old Man of the Sea sat upon Sindbad.
Bartholomew Binns, an official with the highest credentials, after being selected from numerous candidates, and receiving a mandate from the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, has his decisions reviewed by twelve good men and true, and reporters are present who publish them through the length and breadth of the land? How is our executioner appointed? Who reviews his decisions? How are they promulgated? Not that it matters to me, personally. When my fatal Monday comes round and sus. per coll. is written under my name in the family archives, I do not imagine it will trouble me much whether the operator was born great, has achieved greatness, or has had greatness thrust upon him. I do not object to the instrument, I object to the system; but many Whist-players are more fastidious, and protest strenuously against being treated worse than other criminals. They hold that the position of a functionary who takes upon himself to decide important questions of law, and to upset old-established precedents, and manufacture new ones on his mere ipse dixit, should be very clearly defined, and that if one man is to unite in his own proper person the attributes of prophet, priest and king—three single gentlemen rolled into one—he should be duly anointed, consecrated and crowned, ad hoc.
For questions involving common courtesy, for insoluble verbal quibbles, for ethical questions of this type, “Ought A to sit quietly at the table while his partner B picks Z’s pocket? and if he ought, is it right for him to share the plunder?” and for the host of minor cases which constantly arise, and for which no law could possibly provide, no better arrangement than the present could be devised. As long as maniacs exist in the land, klepto-, dipso-, homicidal, or Whist—offences must come, and in disposing of them—where a cadi is the only effective treatment that can be openly suggested—the editor of the Field is facile princeps,