In sober fact the gambling mania is one for which no specific remedy exists—it is possessed by those who are well aware of its dangers, and realise that in the ordinary course of events it must prove ultimately destructive. Repress it in one direction and it reappears—more often than not worse than ever—in another.
It is impossible to dragoon human nature into virtue. The leopard cannot change its spots, or the Ethiopian his skin. Man with his craving for strong emotions will assuredly find means of gratifying them, and it is mere hypocritical rubbish to assume that in the future milk and water is to be the elixir of life.
The well-meaning altruist, who looks with contempt on the frivolous occupations which appear to amuse a great part of mankind, should remember that they, on the other hand, are equally at a loss to account for the pleasure which he derives from the more elevated pursuits in which their lower mental capacities forbid them to indulge.
As a matter of fact the strongest motive with all mankind, after the more sordid necessities are provided for, is excitement. For this reason gambling will continue—even should all card-playing be declared illegal and all race-courses ploughed up.
Repugnant as the idea may be to the Anglo-Saxon mind, regulation, not repression, is without doubt the best possible method of mitigating the evils of speculation; and, moreover, such a system possesses the undeniable advantage of diverting no inconsiderable portion of the money so often recklessly risked into channels of undoubted public benefit.
The time is not yet when English public opinion is prepared to face facts as they are; but though it may be at some far distant day, that time must come, when a wiser and more enlightened legislature, profiting by the experience of the past, will at last realise that the vice of gambling cannot be extirpated by violent means. Reluctantly, but certainly, it will endeavour to palliate the worst features of gambling by taking care that those who indulge in it shall do so under the fairest conditions, whilst at the same time paying a toll to be applied for the good of the community at large.
Such is the inevitable and only solution of a social problem which from any other direction it is absolutely hopeless to approach.