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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

[introduction]

No one will deny, writes Father Masterson, that gambling is often a sin or the occasion of sin. It is sinful for the father of a family to gamble away the money which ought to be spent on his children's education. It is sinful for the shop assistant to risk in betting or gaming the money which he has filched from his master's till. It is sinful for the bank clerk to stake money which he has embezzled from his bank. Also gambling is to be condemned whenever it leads to the breach of a law which the gambler is bound to observe; whenever it is the occasion of drunkenness, or quarrelling, or blasphemy, or causes him to violate the precept af hearing Mass on Sunday.

Of these and other sins gambling is often the occasion. Indeed, gambling may be attended with be many and such serious evils that the reformer who would successfully cope with them would deserve the gratitude of his country. We are not without reformers, who try to cope with them. They abound in our midst, and their greatest enemies cannot charge them with any lack of zeal. Certainly, they cry aloud and spare not. But so small is the measure of success which rewards their efforts that they would be very well advised to pause and ask themselves whether, after all, there may not be something wrong in their methods. For myself, I cannot help thinking that their want of success is largely due to the headlong intemperance of their zeal. You cannot hector or bully men into becoming virtuous. Especially, if you wish men to give up a practice the propensity to which is deeply rooted in their nature, wisdom, as I should have thought, ought to suggest other weapons than the scalping-knife and the tomahawk. Our reformers are never tired of bearing page 16 witness to the keenness and prevalence of the gambling spirit. If the disease is so prevalent and so inveterate, surely there is all the greater call on the physician to proceed with great caution and prudence: yet our physicians apply probe and knife as ruthlessly as if the use of these instruments were their dear delight. No distinction is drawn between gambling and gambling. The practice is condemned as absolutely and as roundly as if the reformers themselves believed, and as if they wished to convey the impression .to their hearers, that all gambling is always and essentially wicked. I hope, then, that it may be useful if, walking soberly in the light which Catholic moralists have shed on my path, I briefly investigate the question whether, independently of the restrictive measures which may have been passed from time to time by our rightful legislators, and of the sins which gambling may occasion, there is anything in the practice which antecedently condemns it, or makes it intrinsically and essentially wrong.