and under certain conditions, gambling is admittedly sinful. It is wrong to desire it inordinately; it is wrong to devote too much time to it; it is wrong to indulge in it, when it is an occasion of sin to others; it is wrong to gamble on Sundays, when we ought to be assisting at Mass; it is wrong to bet with money that is not our own; it is wrong to bet with money which is our own, but which ought to be applied to other purposes, to the support of wife or children, or to the paying of our debts. I might go on multiplying instances: I hope, however, I have given examples enough to show that I am not forgetful of the many ways in which gambling may be sinful. But the question which I have got to determine is not whether gambling is sinful in certain circumstances and under certain conditions, but whether it is sinful in all circumstances and under all conditions; in other words, whether betting or gambling is wrong in itself? In trying to determine this question, I may seem to be embarking on a perilous sea. In reality, it is not so. Many capable mariners have already made the voyage. They have mapped it out. They have taken account of all the rocks and shallows. If one sails by their charts one cannot err from the right course. I will try scrupulously to follow in their wake. I will heave the lead at every point of the voyage. Letting metaphor drop, and speaking plain language, I will follow the great writers on morals so closely that, though I may not everywhere explicitly refer to them, I hope I shall make no statement of any importance which has not the sanction of their high authority. If I should seem to some not to have leaned as heavily on betting and gambling as I ought to have done, my defence is that it was not my ambitious purpose to strike out a new system of ethics, but to record, as truthfully as I might, what the great moral writers have said on the morality of gambling. Besides, Christian ethics ought to come out a perfect round'; and I do not see my way to uttering a condemnation that would logically lead to conclusions which every man of common sense ought to reject. If I were to condemn the betting contract, I should, in consistency, condemn dealing on the Stock Exchange, insurance contracts, and every other contract into which an element of chance enters the same principle underlies them all.

A game, as it is considered by moralists, is a contract in which the players agree or stipulate that the stake

which each of them puts down shall be given as a reward to the winner. Let us take as an example a game of cards. It will serve our purpose as well as any other; and it is a game about which even the most innocent of us probably knows something. A and B engage in a game of cards. They find but small recreation or enjoyment in playing for amusement, so they put down a small stake, just to give zest to the game. Provided they observe the necessary conditions of which I will speak by and by, who will say that they have not a perfect right to do so? Each is the owner of his money. He may, if he likes, make a present of it to the other. No one will deny this. And if he make a present of it to the other, why may he not give it to the other, not as a present, but on condition that he shall win the game of cards they are playing?

There is a class of contracts called 'gratuitous,' in which the whole burden is felt by one side. A gift is an example of a gratuitous contract. A friend offers me a

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sum of money as a gift. By word, or by some other external sign, I sufficiently manifest my acceptance of the gift, and the contract between us is complete. But the betting or gambling contract belongs to quite another class; to the class called onerous'; and so called, because, in all contracts included under the description, each side has to shoulder its burden. So that the lady moralist, to whom I referred at the beginning, was not quite ethically correct in her understanding of the gambling contract. It is quite true that, of our two card-players, the winner alone received money at the end of the game; but to form a just judgment, we must take into account the beginning of the game, as well as the end of it. Both players began the game with equal hopes and fears: each hoped he would win; each feared that he would lose. The horse that I sell at the fair is the equivalent of the money I receive for it. The hope of winning, which the loser had at the beginning of the game, is the equivalent of the stake he has had to make over to the winner. That hope had a money value, and was made the object of a perfectly just contract. Also, at the beginning of the game, the winner exposed his money to risk. That risk, too, is a commodity of marketable value, and, when victoriously passed through, is deserving of its reward; as are also the talent and skill of the winner.

Many allow betting and gambling to be lawful, provided

they are used as a means to legitimate recreation, but condemn them as sinful if the end in view be profit or gain. Such, however, are quite mistaken. The pursuit of profit is not always a vice. It is often a virtue; as, for example, when a man aims at profit in order to procure the necessaries of life for himself, for his wife, or for his children. In such a case he may lawfully use gambling or betting as a means to achieving the end in view: both end and means are quite harmless.

As we have seen, a game is a contract in which the players agree or stipulate that the stake shall be ceded to the winner. For the justice of the contract, the following conditions must be verified:

The first condition is, that the player should be free to alienate the stake which he risks on the game. It is a general rule that you cannot win from another that which does not belong to him, nor that of which he has not the free disposal. However, if a man plays with money which is not his own, and wins, he is commonly allowed to keep what he wins, as being what they call the fruit of his industry. But if he loses, and if the real owner afterwards makes a demand upon the winner for restitution of the stake he has won, the winner is bound to make restitution, if he still has the stake or its equivalent. This may seem a bit hard on the bona fide winner; but let us examine the case a little more in detail, and we shall easily convince ourselves of the justice of what I have said. A and B play a game of cards. A puts on the game money which belongs not to himself but to C. B wins, and A pays the money to him. But A was not the owner of that money at all: it in reality belonged to C, and it continues to belong to him, it did not cease to be his by passing into the possession of B. As A was not the owner of it, he could not transfer the right of ownership to B. No man can give to another that which he himself has not. So that if C afterwards claims the money, he claims what, in strict justice, is his, and B, in strict justice, is bound to make restitution, if he still has the money or its equivalent. And the bona fides with which he may have played the game cannot release him from the obligation. Bona fides does not justify me in keeping another man's money once I have come to know that it is another man's. But in this case B has a claim on A for the full amount, and A is bound to make full compensation to B. By an onerous contract, he

bound himself to pay so much money; provided B won, B made good the condition. A paid him with another man's money; which, in reality, was no payment at all. B, on demand, made over the money to C, the real owner, as he was, in justice, strictly bound to do; and, in consequence, A is his debtor for the full amount, in virtue, as I have said, of the onerous contract freely made.

Under this head let us consider one case more, though it is not that of a man who plays with another's money, but that of a man who plays for money, though he has no money of his own or of anyone else's. X and Z play at cards for substantial stakes; but during the game they make use of counters. X, who has not a penny in the world, but who is in the practice of living on his wits, wins £50, which Z promptly pays him at the end of the game. The question is, may X keep the £50? Most certainly, he may not. He is bound in justice to make restitution of every penny of it. He has destroyed all equality in the contract. He wished to bind Z to the amount of £50, as it has turned out, whilst he bound himself to nothing whatever.

The second condition is, that the betting or gambling contract should be made freely by both parties. Free consent of the will is necessary for the validity of every contract whatever; and if such condition be absent, the contract is null and void. Hence, if in betting or gambling I win money from a man who is drunk, or even half-seasover, I am bound to make restitution. The loser, with his brain so addled, cannot form the deliberate judgment which ought to precede and direct the consent of his will. What if the consent is given, but extorted by fraud or fear? If he, who was the victim of fraud or fear, lose, may the other pocket the spoil? Some moralists say that he may not; their reason being that, as the injury done is the cause of the other's loss, the winner must make restitution of his ill-gotten gain. Others deny that the injury done is the real cause of the loss: they say that the real cause of the loss is the ill-luck of the loser; that, at worst, the injury done is only the occasion of the loss. In the end, there is not so much difference between the two opinions: practically, the result is the same; because the latter class of moralists admit that the winner is bound to make restitution, if the loser demand it. That is, they hold that the contract was valid, but that the victim of

Moreover,

fear or fraud may rescind or break it at will. if, by using fear or fraud, I compel another, say, to play cards with me for money, that is itself a sign that, as a player, I am notably superior to him, and that I am practically sure of winning. Consequently the equality, which, as we shall see, ought to exist between the players, does not in reality exist; and, on this score at least, there is the obligation to make restitution. Nor will anything I shall say, when I come to discuss the necessity of equality, militate against what I have just said; for, let it be remembered, in the case I am now discussing, the loser did not enter the game from any imprudence on his part, but because he was coerced into it by fear or fraud.

The third necessary condition is that, in the course of the game, the players shall not make use of any wiles or dodges that are contrary to the recognized laws of the game. If a player win by using such wiles, he is bound not only to make restitution of the stake he has won, but also to compensate the hope of winning which the other would have had, if the game had been played fairly. A little thought will make this second obligation clear. The man who has cheated is bound to repair the whole loss suffered by the other; and he does not repair the whole loss by merely making restitution of the stake. The hope

of winning which the other had was, as I have said above, a commodity of marketable value. He has been filched of that hope. The injury is accompanied by loss; and that loss ought to be repaired by restitution.

There are other little dodges which are not considered contrary to the recognized laws of the game. Even these a man with a high sense of honour would not be likely to avail himself of; yet, because they are not unjust, they are permitted by the moralists; such dodges, for example, as pretending that your hand is weak when it is really strong; coming to know, in the course of the game, certain cards by marks on the backs of them, provided you yourself did not mark them beforehand. These and the like dodges are permitted, partly because they have the sanction of custom, partly because they ought not to deceive the other players. If the If the Heathen Chinee' had only 'smiled as he sat by the table with the smile that was childlike and bland'; if he had merely pretended that he was not proficient in the game of Euchre, I, for one, would acquit him of injustice. Such obvious simulation