The Barrow Herald and Furness Advertiser. — 1871-06-10 (Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England)

SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 1871.  "ONE LAW FOR THE RICH, &C." THE vulgar notion that "The perfection of reason," as the British Laws have been called, are enacted in favour of a section of society, receives very undesirable confirmation in recent statutes touching betting. Hiding a shilling occasionally for the reckoning, as Dr. Johnson truly remarked, is in no sense immoral ; and betting may take place without being in the slightest degree reprehensible. But those who make it their occupation, and are called "Bookmakers," devote themselves to a business which we should think would not be very attractive to people of delicate conscience. We are utterly at a loss, however, to know why my Lord Tom Noddy is permitted to devote his life openly to "laying against the favourite," and a poor man, who may happen to keep a public house as his only means of living, dare not, at the present day, hold the stakes in a sixpenny wager for two of his best customers. It is the old story— " One man may steal a horse, and another must  not look over the hedge." At the same time we flatter ourselves that now-a-days laws are made for the purpose of promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and with some regard to even-handed justice. It is certainly not so in relation to the practice of betting, which had much better be put down universally, so far as law can do it, than treated as it is at present by our legislature. We are told that a clerk cannot afford to bet, and that he is liable to become a gambler. Experience proves that he encounters no greater risk in this respect than the greatest " bookmaker " on the turL We are no advocate of the practice of gambling; and for the wrongs of the professional gamester we have not a profound sympathy; but so long as Tattersall's is one of the tolerated institutions of the land, the people will feel they have in simple fairness a perfect right to their humble betting club; and the law now so stringently enforced against the poor man in this matter is one of the exc uses, which we sincerely wish did not exist, for certain Jacobin cliques, which are not an agreeable sign of the times. We concur in, and commend to the attention of our readers, the following remarks from last week's Examiner, on this somewhat important subject : A" To our thinking, the whole of the legislation upon the subject is radically vicious and defective. In the first place, it is clear that a Government which resolves to put down gambling is bound to act impartially, and not to make a law which avowedly endeavours to put down gambling amongst people of limited incomes, and to leave untouched the ' legitimate' gambling of the rich. We might as well, on the ground that drinking is a national evil, forbid the sale of fermented or distilled liquors in any amount smaller than a hogshead, and so render it penal to sell a glass of sherry for sixpence in ready imoney, but possible to sell a butt of sherry upon credit. And, in the second place, we doubt whether betting is ,in any way such a malum in as as to call at all for legislative interference. The betting leads sometimes to bankruptcy, sometimes to robbery and forgery, and sometimes to suicide, is true enough; but it has not yet been shown that it necessary leads to all these things, any more than does billiard-playing or dog-fancying, or going behind scenes at theatres. lndeeed, from every point of view, the Betting-house Act is a blunder.  "It seems to us that betting is—exactly as is drinking or card-playing, or hunting, or going to the theatre—a thing which is, in itself, neither right nor wrong, but which, if carried to excess, may expose a man to very serious and dangerous temptation. We doubt whether Government does well to interfere with things of this kind. Certainly, when it interferes in such a manner as to afford even a handle for the charge of class legislation, it does more harm than good. When it was decided, in the reign of George the Second, to prohibit hazard, Parliament did not pass a law forbidding public hazard-tables, but simply prohibited hazard under any circumstances or conditions whatever, and even now hazard is as illegal in a Pall-mall club or in a private house as in a common hell or in a booth upon a race-course. Indeed, except in the most villanous holes and corners,the game no longer exists. And similarly were the rightous zeal of Mr. Hughes to move him to-morrow to put a stop to billiard-playing, he would have to forbid public and private tables alike, not so to draft his Act as only to catch those tables for the use of which a payment is made. But the real fact is that, although they would hardly admit it. Mr. Hughes and his friends are of opinion that the offence of betting varies with the position of the onender, wing very heinous in a soup-boy, bad in a clerk, pardonable in a country gentleman, and so forth, until it becomes almost a virtue in a duke. And since they dare not deal with betting as bravely as the Ministers of George the Second dealt with hazard and roulette, t e salve their consciences by an imbecile and idle attempt to render betting impossible for all but "gentlemen of quality."