The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-18
GAM BLING.

Gambling is a very ancient evil and has
always been fashionable dissipation. The
ancient Greeks INDUCED in it and the Ro-
mans were great gamblers. Among them
gaming had attained the dignity of sci
ence and books were written thereon.
Julius Cesar in his youth was q most
notorious gambler, losing sums so enorm-
Gus that he became bankrupt before he be-
came famous for anything else. The
Roman emperor Justinian forbade public
gaming as early as the sixth century. In
the middle ages the clergy were greatly
given to gambling, and in the fifteenth
century an abbess was tried for having
Systematically gambled in her convent.
The Asiatics were from the earliest times
great gamblers; gambling with cards came
into vogue in Europe during the fourteenth
century by way of Arabia. The Chinese
are passionate gamblers, as are the Amer
lean Indians, the Southern negroes, the
Mexicans and all the Spanish-American
peoples.
A very small portion of the worlds
gambling is done with cards; gambling is,
like lust, one of the primitive vices of both
the savage and the civilized man. Its
universally is easily explained, for it has
its root in ayarice and Incidence. 1t is the
passion to get something for nothing. and
is of kin to the desire to acquire property
by theft rather than by labor. The primi-
tive man stood for unbridled lust and law
less avarice. The primitive barbarian,
whom he wanfe1 sayoathipp far po+b;ro
robbed and murdered his weaker fellow to
get it, but when society organized and
rose to the level of the rights of property
and their legal protection by the state,
then the man who wanted something for
nothing was obliged to win it by his wits,
was driven to steal by craft rather than by
force, and instead of knocking a man in
the head to get his money, men began to
sit up nights and devise methods by
which they could successfully get some
thing for nothing out of their neighbors.
Gambling began in an effort to steal by
stratagem what men dared not or could
not steal by force. The gamblers chance
when honestly given was tempting lure
to persuade every greedy fellow to compel
but, Of course, naturally the professional
gambler soon learned to summon fraud 10
his assistance, and from time immemorial
the professional gambler or the bank al
most invariably bankrupts the infatuated
persons who in vain seek TO pit their skill
and luck against the natural or fraudu-
lently contrived advantage of the profess
a;r NIL
burst.
The oldest human literature records this
passion for gambling. From the rudest
savage al the bottom Of society to the
Prince Of Wales at its top, the world is
passionately fond of gambling in some
way. The Indian was a gambler before
be knew the use OF alcohol; the ChInaman
before he knew the use OF opium: the
ancient Greeks, the Hebrews, the Romans.
the Egyptians were all inveterate gam
blers before they were drunkards, because,
as We argued, the gambling instinct grew
ont of the primitive passion of avarice and
the indolent desire 10 dodge labor and live
by violence when you can; by fraud when
you cannot by force. Gambling began as
as VI TIC ElSnI OF H.
divldual property and the legal protection
of both the strong and the weak against
the ubiquitous and indiscriminate rob-
berry of every man by his neighbor who
had the strength and the opportunity to
murder him.
The ethics of enlightened civilization
separated the legitimate exchange of
commodities from the so-called business
methods of cheating and gambling, just as
the world gradually obeyed its growing
sense Of self-interest, as expressed in the
highest domestic happines. and economic
comfort. by preferring monogamy TO pro-
miscuity or polygamy in the sexual rela-
tons, and teaching the temperate use OF
wine BY despising and deriding the drunk
ard Gambling, drunkenness and hcen-
tiousness, the most destructive vices that
scourge humanity. are but the survival OF
the primitive desires OF the savage man
that when refined down 70 state OF healthy
restraint stand for the yirtuous forces Of
human thrift and acquisitiveness: OF tenn