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.