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iven here but a mild account of the way in which men who bet on horses make money. They have been known to go a great deal farther. Some will willingly take the odds against a horse after they knew certainly that the horse would not run. Others, a shade more advanced, have been known to bribe a jockey to 'hold' or 'rope' a horse, or a stableman to poison or even stupefy him. Others, say, even 'noble' owners, have been known to work the market in ways fully as flagitious.
Let me, in conclusion, quote two short passages, one from a letter by Charles Dickens, the other from a speech by Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. The first seems to relate to the successful bookmaker: --'I look at the back of his bad head repeated in long lines on the racecourse, and in the betting-stand, and outside the betting-rooms, and I vow to God I can see nothing in it but cruelty, covetousness, calculation, insensibility, and low wickedness .... If a boy with any good in him, but with a dawning propensity to sporting and betting, were but brought hero soon enough, it would cure him.' The other passage
applies to the bookmaker and his victim alike :--' The pernicious and fatal habit' of betting' is so demoralizing and degrading, that, like some foul leprosy, it will eat away the conscience until a man comes to think that it is his duty to himself to "do his neighbor as his neighbor would do" him.'
CHANCE AND LUCK
LOTTERIES.
LONG experience has shown that men possessed with the gambling spirit (ninety out of a hundred if the truth were known) are not to be deterred from venturing small sums in order to win large fortunes, even by the clearest evidence that the price they have to pay is an unfair one. The Government lotteries in this country early put this matter to the test. Having decided on a certain set of money prizes and a certain number of tickets, the Government did not offer the tickets to the public for more than they were worth, but for what they would fetch. They seldom failed to obtain from contractors at least 16l. for a ticket mathematically worth 10/. And the contractors not only showed by offering these sums their faith in human credulity, but practically proved the truth of their faith by disposing of their tickets for 51. or 61. more than they had paid Government for them. Thus the Government occupied a very favorable position. For every million they offered in prizes they received more than 1,600,000/.; yet they asked no one to pay an unfair price. They left the contractors to do that, who were not only willing, but anxious to
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