The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1902-03-19 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

REV. F. CHURCH ON  BETTING.  On Sunday afternoon the usual Mem's Sleeting was held at Brunswick Church was well attended. Madame Emilie Mown wao the soloist. and rendered with great taste Entreat me not to leave thee" and "The Children's Home."  In dealing with the subject announced, the Rev. F. Church referred to the °midi* case, and the evidence given last week by the Duke of Devonshire before the Select Committee of the House of Lords. The first reference was to what had been called the great beano] industry in the breeding and training of horses. It might be riAt to assert that owners and trainers improved .the breed of horses until they are swifter and stronger than the Arab steed; but what about the sum of results? We must oppose all betting as—what Beaconsfield termed—a vast engine for national demoraliestion. So patent has the curse become that men—by no means Puritanical— declare it to be corrupt beyond recovery, and a corrupter of all who tamper with it. They tell us that the very Mann& .phere of the racecourse is redolent of doubledealing, and that men addicted to betting are unfitted for places of trust. The excitement and greed of the course choke the finer feelings, kill self-respect, destroy the will, lead the fevered brain to unrestrained dissipation, and its followers to • recklese samiice of everything and everybody to its own Passionate end. We reed of carnival, duel, and suicide at Monte Carlo; but this is not troree than the moral suicide of foolish Englishmen and the wicked desolation of I English homes. Betting diverts money front I ite legitimate Use. Our workingmen are now; striving for a larger there in the profits of labour. If their claim is legitimate—and who will eay it is not—and if theY have not enough to purchase the necessities and de, cencies of life, how can they spare and spend so much on drink and gambling? We are glad of the protect of snob • man as John Hum, who said: "They, is nothing that makes use more sick than to see men wasting their money, whit* should go to support the wife and bairns, on betting." Mr. Church then took a second reference in the Duke's evident's: "It was quite impossible to impose penalties on an act which was not in itself either wrong or immoral"; and contended, with Herbert t3penoer, that it was anti-eccial and sinful. His ground for this was in the principle of betting, by which • man sought to gam from his neighbour that for which he gave no equivalent in money. goods or ser.ice. It was gain without merit. As Sumer intimates in his `Study of Sociology, page 306: "Lawful trade consists in an exchange with mutual advantage." For instance, I have something You want— labour, property, knowledge; you have something I want, food, clothing, money. We agree to make an exchange, and both profit by the traneaction. But betting is the direct oDoosito to this, It is an aim to get all and giv• nothing. Mortensen, in his "13cial Ethics," and others, contend rightly that rtioneT can only be rightly acquired by gift, inheritance, or in return for value or s,rvice; therefore, betties must be wrong—notwithstanding 11,0 of Devonshire's stateme t--- 3ieracre %nem is no quid pro quo. [Framed into a syllogism, it stands thus :1 The oneness of ein is .elfishness. Gandolizig is the very essence of selfishness; . .  Theref,  gamblmg