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Gamblin 
 
 Or, Fortuna, her Temple and 
 Shrine. The True Philosophy 
 and Ethics of Gambling. By 
 James Harold Remain. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 The Craig Press. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1891. 
 
 JAMES HAROLD ROMAIN. 
 
pubUsber’s IRote to tbe ipubUc. 
 
 i7‘f-.e 
 
 R 7 ' ■ ' 
 
 America is free and her people boast of her freedom in 
 every realm of thought and every department of activity. 
 Her pride is a form of discussion from which no man is ex- 
 cluded because of the opinions he may advocate. We declare 
 a man should he heard in the very face of prejudice or passion. 
 
 Mr. Romain’s book, in our judgment, is entitled to publi- 
 cation for other reasons than those above mentioned. It is 
 replete with learning, and original in conception. The phil- 
 osophy is broad and the tone dignified. Patient research is 
 manifest in every page. Every branch of knowledge has been 
 made to contribute its force to the argument. The work is a 
 mine of information in political speculation, social science and 
 moral philosophy. Mr. Romaip is obviou^sly in sympathy with 
 the widest possible circle of culture. For that reason, if for 
 no other, what he has to say is entitled to a respectful con- 
 sideration. His book is unique in design and MTought out 
 with vigor. His appeal is to philosophy, science and history ; 
 not to idle curiosity, purposeless gossip, or the unimportant 
 ‘ ‘ personal equation ” to which others have been so prone. 
 
 In the interest of fair play, but, confessedly, with no sym- 
 pathy for gambling, the book is offered to the people to decide 
 as to the correctness of its conclusions. 
 
 Adam Craig, Publisher. 
 
 p rs p 0 ^ Q 
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
• 1 
 • V 
 
 
 
 
 :V- 
 
(TblB boob i0 DeDtcateb 
 ^To tbe 
 
 Ibon. 3obn Cameron Simonbo, 
 
 bg tbc author, 
 
 ag a token of esteem for bis 
 fairsminbebness anb sense of justice. 
 Bltbougb that gentleman is not a gamester, 
 nor in sgmpatbB with tbe pursuit, 
 get tbe author besires thus to acbnowlebge bis 
 inbebtcbness to him for mang valuable suggestions 
 in tbc preparation of this work. 
 
 5 
 
PREFACE 
 
 WO doughty knights, clad cap-a-pie in 
 
 1 burnished mail, once journeyed forth 
 in search of martial adventure. Their 
 noble steeds all caparisoned for war, both 
 wandered up and down through the world, 
 defending the fair and protecting the weak. 
 Betimes they chance to meet where stood in 
 majestic beauty a bronze statue of victory. 
 In her right hand the goddess clasped a 
 sword, while in graceful pose her left rested 
 upon an aegis richly wrought in the precious 
 metals. Approaching from opposite direc- 
 tions, to one warrior the shield appeared as 
 of gold, while to the other it was of silver. 
 
8 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Low were bowed their crested helms in 
 courtly salutations. 
 
 “Comely, Sir Knight,’’ said one, “ comely 
 and noble is this figure.” 
 
 “ Yea, thou hast spoken truly,” was the 
 reply. 
 
 “ Precious, very precious,” rejoined the 
 first, “must be yon golden targe.” 
 
 “ Nay, Sir Knight, it is of silver, I trow.” 
 
 “ By my lady, thou best,” quickly came 
 the hot retort. 
 
 Then, prancing chargers well in hand, 
 with lances lowered to deadly level, they 
 prepared for the “wager of battle.” Both 
 were unhorsed in the onslaught. Regaining 
 an upright posture, with swords drawn to 
 renew the duel, each observed that his reverse 
 of the shield was what the other had con- 
 tended for. Moral: It is wise to look first 
 upon both sides of the subject. 
 
 Not so, it is evident, has it been with 
 books heretofore devoted to a discussion of 
 gambling. Their authors professed an ex- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 9 
 
 position of gaming in the interest of mor- 
 ality. Well may some of the books be 
 read for their wealth of information and 
 excellent diction. Some have been earnest, 
 in places eloquent, and often suggestive. 
 Vivid and dramatic are the descriptions of 
 a passion that has possessed the world in 
 all ages ; ■ yet, that the various assaults were 
 conceived in wisdom, or that they have resulted 
 in permanent good, I am constrained to deny. 
 
 True, I believe with Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 that out of history may be gathered a policy 
 no less wise than eternal; “by the comparison 
 and application of other men’s forepassed 
 miseries with our own like errors and ill- 
 deservings.’’ 
 
 But why did it not occur to these writers 
 that circumstances should not be recorded 
 merely because they have happened ; that 
 events deserve memorial only because they 
 illustrate some great principle ; because 
 some inference is to be drawn from them, 
 which may increase the happiness or enlarge 
 
10 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the powers of man? That it did not, we 
 must infer from the pages they have 
 given to the world. Cicero declared that 
 “History is the light of truth.” In vain, 
 however, do we look for a consideration of 
 causes in any history of gambling. “ Histories,” 
 said Carlyle, “ are as perfect as the historian 
 is wise.” Is that book wise wherein no ade- 
 quate remedy is suggested for the evil it de- 
 picts? Although interesting, such a work is 
 but a chronicle devoid of moral purpose. It 
 is clear, to dwell upon the follies of man will 
 not cure them; that it will not strengthen 
 humanity merely to portray their weaknesses. 
 The passion our author would combat is 
 rooted in the soul. 
 
 “ Whose powers at once combat ye, and control, 
 
 Whose magic bondage each lost slave enjoys.” 
 
 How would you extirpate the evil, if such 
 it is? Expose a folly, you may say, and 
 wisdom will turn from it. You would have 
 us believe, perhaps, that: 
 
 “Wisdom from heaven received her birth; 
 
 Her beams transmitted to the subject Earth.” 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 II 
 
 And yet 
 
 “ This great empress of the human soul 
 Does only with imagined power control, 
 
 If restless passion, by rebellious sway. 
 
 Compels the weak usurper to obey. ” 
 
 So far as the history of gambling has ig- 
 nored causes and neglected remedies, it is in- 
 complete. That it is deficient in both is my 
 reason for this book. Some one should 
 begin the subject where other authors have 
 deserted it. 
 
 I have long made a study of gaming in 
 all its aspects and relations ; aiming, the 
 while, at breadth, impartiality and thorough- 
 ness. At first my reading was not conducted 
 with a view to authorship. I desired infor- 
 mation for its own sake. As a gamester, 
 I sought the philosophy of gaming. 
 
 What is chance? How far does it influ- 
 ence all mankind and circumscribe their 
 efforts? What is gambling, in the broadest 
 sense of the term ? Is gaming wrong per se: 
 i.e., absolutely vicious ? Where in human 
 
12 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 nature is the passion grounded? Why does 
 the propensity exist? Is it an inevitable ten- 
 dency of human nature? What is morality? 
 Wherein does the gambler differ from other 
 men? How should his occupation be dis- 
 tinguished from business generally? How 
 far may the conduct of an individual be 
 dictated by society? How may the essentially 
 punitive be distinguished from that which 
 is not so? What are the true limits of State 
 power in relation to appetites and propensi- 
 ties? Are sumptuary laws effectual? Does 
 history, as the philosophy of example, justify 
 such enactments? Can the law eradicate 
 innate tendencies? Can character be trans- 
 formed by statute? Is it possible to legislate 
 morality into mankind? What should be 
 the policy of statesmen and reformers in 
 the realm of morals? If it is not possible 
 to extirpate the passions by law, how may 
 they be regulated, directed, educated and 
 purified? 
 
 Such were the problems that confronted 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 13 
 
 my understanding. Each and all were re- 
 solved to the best of my knowledge and 
 capacity. I make my observations public in 
 the interests of fair play and common sense. 
 I am at least entitled to the literary chances 
 of a reading age. 
 
 I have dallied with fickle fortune for 
 years. As gamester, I anticipated prejudices 
 against the pursuit. My deductions are 
 amply fortified, therefore, from the mature 
 studies of great and wise men. I did not 
 expect my book to stand unsupported. It 
 is substantiated, throughout, by the teachings 
 of profound and impartial philosophers. 
 
Contents. 
 
 ( 16 ) 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Publisher’s Note, - - - - - - 3 
 
 Dedication, - - - - - - - 5 
 
 Preface, ... ... 7 
 
 Introduction, 19 
 
 The Worship of Fortuna, - - - - 27 
 
 What is Truth; or, The Philosopher’s Stone? - 46 
 
 The Destinies; or, The Reign of Law, ■ - 103 
 
 Legislative Exorcism; or, The Belief in Word 
 
 Magic, ■ 139 
 
 “The King is Dead— Long Live the King!” - - 211 
 
 ( 17 ) 
 
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INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A TRAVELER once sought to explore 
 an unknown country. Compass he 
 had not, and both chart and guide were 
 wanting. In the distance a mountain loomed 
 above the plain. To its summit our traveler 
 made his way. From thence he beheld the 
 region stretching away in all directions. The 
 land he would traverse the eye could now 
 sweep from center to circumference. It was 
 not possible to know the landscape in detail, 
 but the relative proportions, distances and 
 boundaries were unfolded at his feet. So, 
 when properly conceived, with the introduc- 
 tion to a book. A perspective of the topic is 
 conducive to better understanding of its 
 scope and purpose. My object is to sustain 
 the following propositions ; 
 
 ( 31 ) 
 
22 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 First . — Men have gambled in all ages of 
 the world. That they will continue to do so 
 is a reasonable presumption. To gamble 
 would seem instinctive — inherent in the souls 
 of mankind and fostered by the very nature of 
 their environment. History reveals that all 
 alike are possessed by this subtle passion — 
 male and female, young and old, good and 
 bad, wise and unwise, rich and poor, the ex- 
 alted and the lowly. In every century may be 
 seen a motley throng kneeling in devotion at 
 the feet of Fortuna. Eagerly about her shrine 
 press the mighty concourse of emperors, 
 kings, chieftains, statesmen, ecclesiastics, sav- 
 ants, philosophers, poets, soldiers and the 
 wayfaring. Now and ever will mankind court 
 the mysterious and uncertain. 
 
 Second . — To define a wager is to defy intol- 
 erance of opinion. Truth is not absolute but 
 relative. It is not to be established ex cathe- 
 dra. Moralists are not in a position to de- 
 nounce gambling per se. They are not yet 
 agreed upon the unconditioned principles of 
 
IJITRODUCTION. 
 
 23 
 
 right and wrong. Before it can speak with 
 authority, moral philosophy must find an ulti- 
 mate, self-evident and irrefragable foundation. 
 That it is essentially criminal or necessarily 
 vicious to invoke a chance has never been 
 demonstrated. To live is to gamble. We all 
 wager in one way or another. Luck is ap- 
 pealed to in every department of huiuan activ- 
 ity. Everywhere uncertainty is the rule and 
 certainty the exception. In the business world 
 vast realms are specifically founded upon the 
 doctrine of chances. If absolutely wrong, 
 then gambling should be discountenanced in 
 all persons under every circumstance. In 
 whatever guise it should be condemned as a 
 principle. Until this has been done society is 
 not in a position to punish in one person what 
 it permits or commends in another. In its 
 treatment of gambling the law is now incon- 
 sistent, unjust and hypocritical. 
 
 Third . — Man is the creature of circum- 
 stances. Society is an organism conditioned 
 by its environments. Every nation must com- 
 
24 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 plete a cycle of infancy, youth, manhood and 
 old age. Briefly, history is a science — an un- 
 broken chain of causes and effects throughout 
 the ages. Volition, so-called, is delusive and 
 shadowy — more apparent than real. At best, 
 we but yield to the greatest pressure of tem- 
 perament or motive. Human nature, in a 
 word, is the result of inevitable tendencies. 
 The passions are inherent and cannot be vio- 
 lently uprooted. Character is innate and not 
 subject to arbitrary reform by extrinsic force. 
 Here, as elsewhere, evolution is the law of ex- 
 istence. While our appetites and propensities 
 may be educated, they can never be obliter- 
 ated. Social and political philosophy have 
 repeatedly deduced these truths from the 
 history of man. In the field of reform 
 officialism has been repudiated by the 
 greatest thinkers. Legislation, therefore, 
 should conform to the light of experience 
 and the dictates of science. Ergo: in the 
 future, as in the past and present, the 
 gaming passion will everywhere assert it- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 25 
 
 self, despite repressive legislation, however 
 severe. 
 
 Fourth . — Sumptuary statutes are futile and 
 impertinent. They are to-day and ever have 
 been indefensible and impolitic. Such laws 
 are an infringement upon individual rights 
 and an insult to human nature. Officious and 
 Pharisaical legislation in the province of 
 morals and taste should be abandoned once 
 and forever. Per se, to gamble is neither a 
 sin nor a crime. For the law to punish the 
 practice is futile and unwarranted. 
 
 Conchision . — An enlightened age demands 
 the overthrow of an effete administrative pol- 
 icy. In the realm of morals, let that be wisely 
 guided which the law cannot prevent. Gam- 
 bling, with certain conditions, should be li- 
 censed and placed under the surveillance of 
 a police. 
 
^be Morsbip of jFortuna. 
 
 ( 27 ) 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ube Morsbip of jfortuna, 
 
 R eader, in imagination go backward 
 with me more than 20 centuries. Enter 
 with me the magnificent and imposing 
 Temple of Fortuna, in old Prseneste. We 
 are within the portico of that stately hemi- 
 cycle. Far above is the marble dome, and 
 about us cluster the snowy columns. As it is 
 early morn, flamens and virgins are assembled 
 inside the sacred precincts. They are grouped 
 about the flaming tripod, and the robes of 
 purple and white blend in harmony of color. 
 The sanctuary is redolent with burning in- 
 cense. A golden image of the goddess, in 
 heroic mould, flashes back the rays of sunlight 
 that penetrate the inner shadows. A solemn 
 
 (29) 
 
30 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 chant entrances the ear, and our eyes turn to 
 the westward. Before us expands the Cam- 
 pagna, ninety miles in length and twenty-seven 
 in breadth. The undulating plain stretches 
 away in all directions until it sinks into the 
 sea; thickly studded is the superb picture with 
 prosperous cities and “every rood of ground 
 maintains its man.” Everywhere is presented 
 an appearance of comfort and rich cultivation. 
 Yonder, Mount Albanus towers to a height of 
 3,000 feet above the sea. Looming majesti- 
 cally above its topmost peak is the Temple of 
 Jupiter Latiaris. The grandeur of mighty 
 Rome is at our feet, a splendid and stupend- 
 ous panorama of temples, amphitheatres, 
 basilicas, palaces, circuses, baths, arches and 
 aqueducts. Such was the spot dedicated to 
 Fortuna by the ancient Praenestians. She 
 was more deeply enshrined in their hearts 
 than Olympian Jove himself. 
 
 Prseneste flourished before the birth of 
 Christ or the glory of Rome. The noble 
 city occupied a projecting point or spur of 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 31 
 
 the Apennines and was distant from Rome, 
 due east, about twenty-three miles. Above 
 its walls towered the Temple of Fortuna. 
 The Temple proper was circular in form 
 and crowned the summit of a hill more than 
 2,400 feet above the Mediterranean level. 
 Standing out boldly against the sky, its 
 majestic outlines were visible from a great 
 part of Latium. As extended by Sulla, the 
 sanctuary occupied a series of six vast ter- 
 races, which, resting on gigantic substruc- 
 tions of masonry, and connected with each 
 other by grand staircases, rose one above 
 the other on the hill, in the form of a 
 pyramid. Closely associated with the ritual 
 of the Temple were the “ Prsenestine Lots,” 
 or Sortes Praenestinae, and in existence at 
 the beginning of the Christian era. Con- 
 stantine, and subsequently Theodosius, sup- 
 pressed the oracle. Its celebrity is attested 
 by Lucan, Horace and Ovid. Cicero speaks 
 of the great antiquity and magnificence of 
 this shrine. Numerous were the great men 
 
32 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 who petitioned the Prtenestine Fortuna tor 
 assistance. Of the number maybe mentioned 
 Tiberius, Domitian and Alexander Severus. 
 Even Sulla sought to propitiate the goddess 
 before engaging in his successful wars with 
 Mithridates. 
 
 Plutarch tells us of Timotheus, the Athe- 
 nian, son of Conon, who, “when his adversaries 
 ascribed his successes to his good luck, and 
 had a painting made representing him asleep, 
 and Fortune by his side, casting her nets 
 over the cities, was rough and violent in 
 his indignation at those who did it, as if, 
 by attributing all to Fortune, they had robbed 
 him of his just honors ; and said to the 
 people, on one occasion, at his return from 
 war: ‘ In this, ye men of Athens, Fortune 
 had no part!’ A piece of petulance which 
 the deity played back upon Timotheus; who, 
 from that time, was never able to achieve 
 anything that was great.’’ 
 
 “ Sylla,’’ he continues, “ on the contrary, 
 not only accepted the credit of such divine 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 33 
 
 favors with pleasure, but gave the honor of 
 all to Fortune. He once remarked; ‘that 
 of all his well-advised actions, none proved 
 SO lucky in the execution, as what he had 
 boldly enterprised, not by calculation, but 
 upon the moment.’ He gave Fortune a 
 higher place than merit, and made himself 
 ‘ entirely the creature of a superior power.’ ” 
 The Goddess of Chance, or Good Luck, 
 actually existed in the imagination of the 
 ancients. Chapman writes; 
 
 ‘ ‘ The old Scytliians 
 
 Painted blind Fortune’s powerful hands with wings, 
 
 To show, her gifts come swiftly and suddenly. 
 
 Which, if her favorites be not swift to take, 
 
 He loses them forever.” 
 
 Temples to Fortuna (the Greek Tyche) 
 dotted the sunlit landscape from Thebes to 
 Rome. She was adored by the Etrurians as 
 Nortia. Originating near Mount Parnassus, 
 her worship gradually extended into all parts 
 of Greece and Italy. Antium, an opulent and 
 powerful city of Latium, was once celebrated 
 for its splendid temple of Fortune. 
 
34 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 History discloses not a period, however 
 remote, when Fortuna was not a favorite with 
 the Latins. Numa Pompilius daily prostrated 
 himself before her altar, and the ceremonial 
 received a new impetus from his pious grand- 
 son, Ancus Martins. Servius Tullius ascribed 
 his power and success to the gods. Especi- 
 ally did he assume the protection of Fortuna. 
 Two temples were erected to her by this 
 great king, one in the F'orum Boarium and 
 the other on the Tiber. By some it is said 
 that the edifices were respectively dedicated 
 to Bona Fortuna and Fors Fortuna. Yet 
 another gorgeous structure afterward graced 
 the Ouirinal. 
 
 Precisely when the mythological system 
 lost its influence is not known. It is not 
 true, however, as was once generally believed, 
 that immediately after the birth of Jesus 
 the oracles were forever hushed. While, long 
 prior to that event, many fanes had been 
 deserted, yet others continued to flourish for 
 at least two centuries thereafter. Before 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 35 
 
 the Christian era, Mythology had been re- 
 pudiated by Philosophy and Science. To 
 the learned it was at best but expressive of the 
 principles back of natural phenomena. Only 
 because it was largely identified with the 
 state, did it receive the support of politicians. 
 Yielding to the spirit of Christianity, the 
 Olympian deities departed with the decline 
 of Rome as a pagan power. 
 
 Of all the shining throng that beautified 
 the Pantheon, Fortuna alone refused to abdi- 
 cate a sovereignty she would exercise to the 
 end of time. True, the exquisite forms in 
 which she had charmed the eye were des- 
 troyed and her temples razed with the earth; 
 yet has Fortuna continued her uninterrupted 
 sway over the hearts of men. Sanctuaries 
 and statutes were not necessary to her su- 
 premacy in the world. She was enshrined 
 in the soul — her worship instinctive in the 
 very nature of humanity. Where is the 
 epoch of Christendom in which an innumer- 
 able multitude have not worshiped this 
 
36 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 imperial goddess ? Among her devotees 
 may be included men famous in every depart- 
 ment of life : politics, statesmanship, war, 
 eloquence, philosophy, science, art, literature 
 and the liberal professions, A review of 
 the brilliant procession is profoundly sug- 
 gestive. 
 
 Great Cyrus, who founded the Persian 
 monarchy; Darius, who originated central- 
 ized imperialism and reduced it to a system; 
 Artaxerxes Third, the greatest administrator 
 of remote antiquity; Miltiades, a name asso- 
 ciated with the glories of Marathon, once 
 designated “ freedom’s best and bravest 
 friend;” Themistocles, to whom may be 
 fairly ascribed the victory at Salamis; Simon- 
 ides, gentle and patient, the poet of na- 
 tionality and patriotism; Aristophanes, the 
 great father, and Menander, the acknow- 
 ledged master of Greek comedy; Pericles, 
 the “ Olympian Zeus of oratory,” a great 
 statesman and one of the most remarkable 
 characters of Greece; Plato, whose name 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 37 
 
 is synonymous with all that is most exalted in 
 idealism; Xenophon, a friend and pupil of 
 Socrates, and to whom the world is indebted 
 for “Memorabilia,” “Anabasis,” and “ Cyro- 
 paedia;” Demosthenes, known to oratory as 
 the “ greatest Hellenic star;” Isocrates, his 
 contemporary, the distinguished rhetorician; 
 Philip of Macedon, the famous father of a 
 more famous son; great Alexander, “ Child of 
 Zeus,” “ Son of Peleus,” familiar to every 
 schoolboy as the greatest of military con- 
 querors. 
 
 In the resplendent story of Rome are 
 Scipio Africanus, a military genius, and the 
 conqueror of Hannibal; Cornelius Sulla, the 
 great general, sagacious politician, accom- 
 plished scholar, “ one of the most remark- 
 able figures of all time;” Julius Caesar, equally 
 preeminent in statecraft, war and letters; 
 Marc Antony, brave and generous; Lepidus, 
 not the least of the second great triumvirate; 
 Augustus, than whom a more consummate 
 ruler and prudent statesman never lived; 
 
38 THE WORSHIP OF FORTLTIA. 
 
 Tiberius, a writer of Greek odes and an 
 orator at nine years of age ; in battle he 
 repeatedly worsted the Parthians, Cantabri- 
 ans, Dalmatians, Pannonians and Illyrians; 
 Domitian, conspicuous for his piety, who 
 enforced the laws against adultery and other 
 gross forms of immorality; Titus, bewailed 
 at his death as “ the love and light of the 
 human race;” Hadrian, just, liberal, valorous 
 and energetic; Nerva, humane and progres- 
 sive; Trajan, indomitable and heroic; Alex- 
 ander Severus, a virtuous prince, a student 
 of Christianity, and the friend of Paulus and 
 Ulpian; Sallust, distinguished in Latin liter- 
 ature for power and animation ; Livy, the 
 man of beautiful genius ; the graceful Ca- 
 tullus; exquisite Horace and facile Ovid. 
 
 Among the Germanic peoples, Eugene of 
 Savoy, a memory cherished by Austria, who 
 lived but for glory, and raised the Hapsburg 
 arms to a prestige unequaled before or since; 
 Wallenstein, bold, imperious and of versatile 
 ability in civil and military affairs. 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 39 
 
 In Italy, the Abbes Ruccellai and Fran- 
 gipanni, pious and charitable ; Reni Guido, 
 who painted the marvellous “ Crucifixion of 
 St, Peter’s,” and the ” Aurora.” In art, he 
 expressed a most refined and fervent spirit- 
 ualism. 
 
 The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Charles 
 of France, distinguished, respectively, as 
 “The Wise,” “The Beloved,” and “The 
 Victorious;” Charles VIII., who, with but 
 
 9.000 soldiers, defeated an Italian army of 
 
 40.000 men; Louis XL, ever admirable for 
 his administrative talent, a friend of the 
 middle classes, he restrained a turbulent and 
 oppressive nobility; Louis XIL, of France, 
 a “father of the people;” Louis XIII., dis- 
 tinguished for valor and martial ability; Louis 
 XIV., better known to the world as “ The 
 Great,” and to his country as Dieu-donne — 
 “God-given;” the amiable and picturesque 
 Henry of Navarre, the champion of Prot- 
 estantism and protector of the Huguenots; 
 Philibert de Chalon, fertile and resolute; 
 
40 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 Bertrand du Guesclin, “king of the tourna- 
 ment,” the ‘‘hero of heroes;” Conde and 
 Turenne, both profound and alert; Marshall 
 Saxe, energetic and courageous; Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, a titanic genius of transcendent 
 powers, king of kings, “ the astonishment and 
 terror of the world;” Ney, bravest of the 
 brave, the victor of Elchingen, Mannheim 
 and Moskva; Murat, “the Gold Eagle,” a 
 truly wise king, and the greatest cavalry 
 leader of his time; Richelieu, greatest states- 
 man of the 17th century; Mazarin, brilliant 
 in ministerial policy, and the wise architect 
 of peace at Westphalia; Mirabeau, a man 
 of gigantic thoughts and deeds — the mental 
 Colossus of his age — “an intellectual Her- 
 cules;” Talleyrand, unexcelled in diplomacy 
 and eminent as a financier; Thiers, equally 
 able in politics and literature; M. Sallo, 
 counselor to the Parliament of Paris, and 
 Mathieu Mole, at one time the Premier-Presi- 
 dent of that body; Moliere, the inimitable; 
 Corneille, creator of Erench tragedy; Rotrou, 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 41 
 
 his master; and Racine; Montaigne, the 
 essayist, extraordinary for his learning and 
 sound reason; Paschasius Justus, an erudite 
 and excellent physician ; Rousseau, apostle 
 of universal happiness, and unrivaled in the 
 literature of France for the subtle eloquence 
 of his style; Voltaire, world-famous Sage of 
 Ferney, the “sovereign writer of his century;” 
 Rene Descarte, deservedly exalted in phil- 
 osophy and mathematics; the delightful poets, 
 Voiture and Coquillart, with the renowned 
 Cardinals D’Este and De Medicis. 
 
 Fair Albion comes into the story with 
 “Lion-Hearted” Richard, the incomparable 
 knight-errant; Edward I., unequaled in his 
 century as warrior and ruler; Edward III., 
 who befriended literature and art, and es- 
 poused the cause of progress; his son, the 
 Black Prince, “most glorious star of chivalry;” 
 Henry VIII., a foe to papacy, and for a time 
 the most popular monarch in English history; 
 “Ye Merrie King Charles;” Duke of Marl- 
 borough, the brilliant and successful general; 
 
42 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 Arthur Wellesley, “The Iron Duke,” vener- 
 ated and beloved; Horatio Nelson, of mag- 
 nificent exploits and stupendous victories, 
 who said; “Where anything great is to be 
 done, there Providence is sure to direct my 
 steps;” unrivaled was he in daring resource 
 and skill; Sir Charles Napier, conqueror of 
 Sindeand the “acknowledged hero of a family 
 of heroes;” Dan Chaucer, “that first sweet 
 warbler” of English verse, philosopher, poli- 
 tician and poet; Marlowe, the mightiest of 
 Shakespeare’s pioneers ; Shakespeare, him- 
 self, “ sweet swan of Avon,” myriad-minded 
 and wondrous; “rare” Ben Jonson; Raleigh, 
 a universal genius — “the glass of fashion 
 and mould of form ; ” Surrey, polished 
 and chivalric ; John Dryden, of whom 
 Dr. Johnson said; “As Augustus was to 
 Rome, so was Dryden to English litera- 
 ture. He found it brick and left it marble;” 
 Dr. Tobias Smollett, who wrote “ Humphrey 
 Clinker;” Fielding, the frank and manly 
 author of “Tom Jones;” sweet Oliver Gold- 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 43 
 
 smith, in letters perspicuous, vivacious, and 
 graceful; Halifax, 
 
 “ Jotliam of piercing wit and pregnant truth, 
 
 Endued by natiu'e and by learning tauglit 
 To move assemblies ; ” 
 
 the first Marquis of Anglesey, high-spirited 
 and impetuous, a dashing geqpral of cavalry; 
 that best of Irish Viceroys, Frederic Howard, 
 Earl of Carlisle ; Lord Bolingbroke, accom- 
 plished and eloquent; Shaftesbury, the incor- 
 ruptible statesman, upright judge and friend 
 of religious freedom; Horace Walpole, of 
 whom Macaulay said, that his writings “were 
 among the delicacies of intellectual epicures;” 
 Dr. Dodd, divine, author, editor and chaplain 
 of the k-ing; George Selwin, the celebrated 
 conversational wit; Sir Philip Francis, im- 
 mortal as “Junius,” and a “friend of the 
 people;” the artistic Farquhar; courtly 
 Waller; elegant Dorset; charming Sedley; 
 and scholarly Congreve; jolly Dick Steele, a 
 master of classical prose; Charles James Fox, 
 of whom James Mackintosh said: “He is 
 
44 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 the most Demosthenian speaker since Demos- 
 thenes;” Sheridan, “capable of the grandest 
 triumphs in oratory,” and noted for his spark- 
 ling wit and exquisite songs; Wilberforce, 
 who dedicated his life to a struggle for the 
 abolition of the slave-trade; Edward Gibbon, 
 the historian, ^lendid, imposing and lumin- 
 ous; Ponsonby, once speaker of the Irish 
 House of Commons; Dr. Colton, author of 
 “ Lacon,” William Pitt, of dauntless spirit and 
 unimpeachable integrity; and Lord Byron, a 
 poet famed for his passionate eloquence and 
 pathetic gloom. 
 
 Fortuna may proudly enumerate her great 
 votaries in America : Aaron Burr, Edgar 
 Allan Poe, William Wirt, Luther, Martin, 
 Gouverneur Morris, Daniel Webster, Henry 
 Clay, General Hayne, Sam Houston, Andrew 
 Jackson, Generals Burnett, Sickles, Kearney, 
 Steedman, Hooker, Hurlbut, Sheridan, Kil- 
 patrick, Ulysses S. Grant, George D. Prentiss, 
 Sargeant S. Prentiss, Albert Pike, A. P. Hill, 
 Beauregard, Early; Ben Hill, Robert Toombs, 
 
THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 
 
 45 
 
 George H. Pendleton, Thaddeus Stevens, 
 Green of Missouri, Herbert and Fitch of Cali- 
 fornia, “Jerry” McKibben, James A. Bayard 
 — father of the recent Secretary of State — 
 Benjamin F. Wade, the lamented Broderick, 
 John C. Fremont, Judge Magowan, Charles 
 Spencer, P'ernando Wood and his brother 
 Benjamin, Colonel McClure, Senator Wolcott, 
 Senator Pettigrew, Senator Farwell, Matthew 
 Carpenter, Thomas Scott, Cornelius Vander- 
 bilt, Hutchinson of Chicago, and Pierre Lorril- 
 lard. Names might be extended indefinitely. 
 Enough have been mentioned to illustrate how 
 the gambling habit permeates all ranks of 
 society in the United States. 
 
 With the conclusion of our retrospect, 
 we may well exclaim: What is the nature of 
 a passion so inveterate and general : of a 
 propensity that dominates all mankind alike, 
 whether noble or mean, wise or foolish, strong 
 or weak? “ Is there a remedy?” propounds 
 the philosopher. The legislator asks, “ What 
 is my duty ? ” 
 

Mbat is ^rutb? 
 
 or, 
 
 Zhc pbilosopber’s Stone. 
 
N’ , - ’* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •V. 
 
 
 W>i 
 
 ■^ V ,. 
 
 , I 'V 
 
 .v* 
 
 I , 
 
 
 
 
 ■I 
 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mbat Is XTrutb; or, tbe pbilosopber’s Stone? 
 
 I N mediaeval romance the Alchemist is a 
 familiar figure — with flowing robe and 
 skull-cap, in the midst of crucibles and 
 alembics. This period of the world did not 
 present a feature more weird and picturesque: 
 a body of learned but misguided men, profes- 
 sing the “chemistry of chemistries.” With 
 eagerness and devotion they vainly sought for 
 a principle that could indefinitely prolong hu- 
 man life and transmute the baser metals into 
 gold and silver. Although centuries have 
 elapsed since Gebir and Paracelsus, yet the 
 “philosopher’s stone” is a desideratum. Of 
 the Alchemists it has been quaintly said by 
 Percy, “ that their respective histories were 
 
 (49) 
 
50 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 accurate illustrations of the definition which 
 describes Alchemy as an Art without prin- 
 ciple, which begins in falsehood, proceeds in 
 labor, and ends in beggary.” 
 
 Forcibly suggestive is this picture of moral 
 philosophy and philosophers. From the re- 
 motest ages certain men have arrogated 
 to themselves a knowledge in the realm of 
 ethics much superior to their brethren. It 
 was manifested by the “gnomic” poetry of 
 Greece, more than 700 years B. C., and in 
 the oracular sayings of the so-called “seven 
 sages” of antiquity. To this day a similar 
 class of wiseacres may be found in all parts 
 of the earth. The moralists, however, search 
 not for the universal medicine or an irresist- 
 ible solvent. Such persons admit the “grand 
 elixir” is a delusion; and yet, their ambition 
 is more daring and presumptions. They 
 would “ be as gods, knowing good and evil.” 
 “ Gold is but dross,” they exclaim, “our quest 
 is for necessary moral truth. We seek im- 
 mutable righteousness.” Long ago was Al- 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 51 
 
 chemy abandoned as futile. Not so the 
 egotistic dogmatism of the moral philoso- 
 phers: with them self-conceit has remained 
 incorrigible, from Socrates and Plato, through 
 Kant and Hegel, to Martineau and Janet. 
 In vain, their assumptions have been repeat- 
 edly demolished and their deductions refuted. 
 Unmindful are they, also, of the irreconcilable 
 conflict of “schools” — the hopeless contradic- 
 tion of “systems.” Fully one hundred great 
 thinkers, first and last, have asserted the 
 discovery of indubitable “good.” But no 
 two of them all agreed upon the infallible 
 line of distinction between what “ ought to 
 be” and its opposite. In fact, every indi- 
 vidual of the number represents a different 
 scheme. All moral philosophers asseverate 
 the necessity for an authoritative standard 
 of right and wrong — for some peremptory 
 and incontestable guide to human conduct. 
 Otherwise, they admit, one opinion is no 
 more acceptable or commanding than an- 
 other. 
 
52 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 Some ■ affirm the existence of an innate 
 faculty, the unerring dictates of which are 
 defended. But Bentham (a great jurist) 
 denounced the “ moral sense ” man as a 
 bully who would brow-beat others into ac- 
 cepting his verdict. All such appeals were 
 described by him as sheer ''ipse dixitism: 
 as a fraud by which incompetent philosophers 
 would palm their own tastes and fancies upon 
 mankind.” “ One man,” wrote Bentham of 
 Shaftesbury, ‘‘ says he has a thing made on 
 purpose to tell hivi what is right and what 
 is wrong; and that it is called moi'al sense: 
 then he goes to work at his ease and says 
 such and such a thing is right, and such and 
 such a thing is wrong. Why? ‘ Because my 
 moral sense tells me it is.’ ” Of the inner- 
 capacity-philosopher, Hazlitt remarked that 
 “ his excessive egotism filled all objects with 
 himself ” To Crabbe, “he was a self-conceited 
 man, who pretends to see through intuition 
 what others learn by experience and obser- 
 vation; to know in a day what another wants 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 53 
 
 years to acquire ; to learn of himself what 
 others are contented to get by means of 
 instruction.” 
 
 Archdeacon Paley, again, ridiculed as 
 worthless a “ moral sense ” which man may 
 disregard if he chooses. What is an author- 
 ity, said Paley, merely felt in the individual 
 consciousness: a personal whim, the mere 
 accident of individuality. What, he asks, is 
 the authority of another’s conscience to me? 
 What, indeed, is my conscience, and why is 
 it an authority to myself ? We can never 
 know whether it is “ a real angel with flaming 
 sword, or a scare-crow dressed up by the 
 moral philosophers.” Did the “moral sense” 
 exist, should we not see a universal evidence 
 of its influence? Would not men exhibit a 
 more manifest obedience to its supposed 
 dictates than they do? Would there not be 
 a greater uniformity of opinion, as to the 
 rightness or wrongness of opinions, as to the 
 rightness or wrongness of actions? “We 
 should, not, as now, find one man or nation 
 
54 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 considering as a virtue what another regards 
 as a vice — Malays glorying in the piracy ab- 
 horred by civilized races — a Thug regarding 
 as a religious act that assassination at v/hich 
 a European shudders — a Russian piquing 
 himself on his successful trickery — a red In- 
 dian in his undying revenge — things which 
 with us would hardly be boasted of. 
 
 “Again, if this moral sense exist and 
 possess no fixity, gives no uniform response, 
 says one thing in Europe and another in 
 Asia — originates different notions of duty in 
 each age, each race, each individual, how 
 can it afford a safe foundation for a system- 
 atic morality? What can be more absurd 
 than to seek a definite rule of right in the 
 answers of so uncertain an authority?’’ 
 
 Can it be fairly said, my reader, that such 
 men are in a position to judge the gambler, 
 or to denounce his vocation? May not the 
 gamester ask of this sect: By what authority 
 do you pronounce judgment, “ out of hand,’’ 
 upon me and mine? Where is your standard 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 55 
 
 — authentic, determinative, undeniable, irre- 
 futable? Am I subject to the dominion of 
 your conscience? In my opinion, gaming is 
 not a sin. In what is your judgment superior 
 to mine? Moreover, I defy you to demon- 
 strate a wager is wrong, se. It you find this 
 impossible, I am free to repudiate your dog- 
 matism. To know, also, that gaming is 
 not prima facie sinful, we have but to define 
 it. 
 
 The lexicographers define a gamester as 
 “one who plays for money or other stake;’’ 
 and gaming “ to be the use of cards, dice, 
 or other implement, with a view to win 
 money, or other thing, wagered upon the 
 issue of the contest.’’ i Is this a description 
 of anything forbidden by the decalogue? 
 Where, in the old or new testament, is a 
 similar transaction denounced as a sin? But, 
 it may be said, perhaps, the foregoing defin- 
 ition does not suffice for moral consider- 
 ation : it ignores the element of chance, 
 which enters more or less into all games. 
 
56 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 This would imply that it is immoial to invoke 
 a fortuity. Is it? 
 
 Here, the great Jefferson may be quoted 
 with propriety: “ It is a common idea that 
 games of chance are immoral. But what 
 is chance? Nothing happens in this world 
 without a cause. If we know the cause, we 
 do not call it chance, but if we do not know 
 it, we say it was produced by chance. If 
 we see a loaded die turn its lightest side 
 up, we know the cause, and that it is not an 
 effect produced by chance; but whatever side 
 an unloaded die turns up, not knowing the 
 cause, we say it is the effect of chance. Yet, 
 the morality of the thing cannot depend on 
 our knowledge or ignorance of its cause. 
 Not knowing why a particular side of an 
 unloaded die turns up, cannot make the act 
 of throwing, or of betting on it, immoral. 
 If we consider games of chance immoral, 
 then every pursuit of human industrj' is im- 
 moral, for there is not a single one that is 
 not subject to chance; not one, wherein you 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 57 
 
 do not risk a loss for the chance of some 
 gain.” 
 
 In “Paradise Lost,” Milton declares: 
 
 “Next him, high arbiter, 
 
 Chance governs all ! ” 
 
 And of mankind we read in Ecclesiastes that 
 “time and chance happeneth to them” — • 
 mankind. (9:11). Among the Hebrews, pro- 
 perty was divided and disputes were decided, 
 “by lot.” The custom is mentioned by Solo- 
 mon, Matthew and Luke. (Prov. 16:33; Matt, 
 27:35; Luke 10. j Furthermore, this mode 
 of appeal to destiny is sanctioned, yea, even 
 prescribed, by the Bible. According to 
 Leviticus, Aaron was commanded “ to take 
 the two goats, and present them before the 
 Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of the 
 congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon 
 the two goats; one lot for the Lord and the 
 other lot for the scape-goat. And Aaron 
 shall bring the goat upon which the Lord’s 
 lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But 
 the goat on which the lot fell to be the 
 
58 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 scape-goat, shall be presented alive before 
 the Lord, to make an atonement with him 
 and to let him go for a scape-goat into the 
 wilderness.” (16:7, 8, 9.) 
 
 Tims was chance invested with the sanctity 
 of a religious observance. 
 
 Moses was instructed that the “ Promised 
 Land ” should be divided among the Hebrews 
 “by lot.” The method is described in Num- 
 bers: “ Notwithstanding, the land shall be 
 divided by lot, according to the names of 
 the tribes of their fathers shall they inherit. 
 According to lot shall the possession thereof 
 be divided between many and few.” This 
 direction was followed to the letter by “ Ele- 
 azar, the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, 
 and the heads of the fathers of the tribes 
 of the children of Israel;” for we are told 
 in Joshua, that “ By lot was their inheritance; 
 as the Lord commanded by the hand of 
 Moses, for the nine tribes and for the half 
 tribe. (Josh 14:1, 2; 18:6.) 
 
 Luck, then, decided the tenure oj the 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 59 
 
 tribes in Canaa^i — a title dictated by Div- 
 mity. 
 
 Joshua determined, by lot, that it was 
 Achan, of the tribe of Judah, who had taken 
 “the accursed thing” and thus brought upon 
 Israel the disaster at Ai. (Josh. 7:14.) 
 During the great battle of Michmash- 
 Aijalon, Saul said unto the Israelites: 
 “Cursed be the man that eateth any food 
 until evening, that I may be avenged on my 
 enemies.” 
 
 Unmindful of this oath, wild honey was 
 eaten by his son, in a moment of extreme 
 hunger. No one would divulge that the 
 king’s adjuration had been disregarded by 
 the beloved Jonathan. “ Therefore, Saul 
 said unto the Lord God of Israel, give a 
 perfect lot. And Saul and Jonathan were 
 taken: but the people escaped. And Saul 
 said. Cast lots between me and Jonathan, 
 my son. And Jonathan was taken.” (i Sam. 
 14:40, 42.) 
 
 By lot, likewise, the question of “ mhiistry 
 
6o 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 and apostlesJlip” was decided against Justus 
 and ui pavor op Alatthias. (Acts i : 26.) 
 
 Briefly, if the Bible is a divine production, 
 how can appeals to chance be stigmatized 
 as vicious or irreligious? Also, it is not to 
 be denied that chance, or casualty, enters 
 very largely into every department of human 
 action. Men are compelled to take ventures 
 every day; the engineer faces them; so does 
 the sea captain; the same may be said of 
 the doctor, the surgeon, the lawyer and the 
 banker. A merchant encounters all the 
 risks of trade; the hostility of the elements 
 and the bankruptcy of others. The rains 
 may rot or the drouths destroy the crops 
 of the farmer. And almost, in the words of 
 Ben Jonson, throughout the world, 
 
 ‘ ‘All human business, fortune doth command. 
 
 Without all order, and with her blind hand. 
 
 She, blind, bestows blind gifts, that still have nurst. 
 They see not who nor how, ” 
 
 The politician, too, might say with Macbeth: 
 “ If chance will have me king, why, chance 
 may crown me.” War is a mighty game 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 6l 
 
 between giants. In truth, of Napoleon the 
 poet has said: 
 
 “ Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones, 
 Whose table, earth ; whose dice, were human bones. ” 
 
 Beyond this, even our laws and institu- 
 tions appeal to chance. In the United States 
 Senate, whom, respectively, of two mem- 
 bers — elected at the same time — shall serve 
 for the long and short term, is decided by 
 lot. The law recognizes that even property 
 may be thus divided. “ When an estate is 
 apportioned into three parts, and one part 
 is given to each of three persons; the proper 
 way is to ascertain each one’s part by draw- 
 ing lots.” Thus is the rule stated by Bouvier 
 and Wolff. The Illinois Statutes, for the 
 regulation of elections, enact that “ when 
 two or more persons receive an equal and 
 the highest number of votes for an office 
 to be filled by the county alone, that county 
 clerk shall issue a notice to such persons 
 of such tie vote, and require them to appear 
 at his office, on a day named in the notice. 
 
62 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 within ten days from the day of election, 
 and determine by lot which of them is to 
 be declared elected. On the day appointed 
 the clerk and other canvassers shall attend, 
 and the parties interested shall appear and 
 determine by lot which of them is to be de- 
 declared elected.” Similar laws exist in 
 other states. 
 
 Some moralists admit the validity of a 
 transaction, notwithstanding it may depend 
 upon chance. They will concede there is 
 no intrinsic wrong in any species of game, 
 unless there exists an inequality of chance 
 or skill. Not so, thought Paley, the Christian 
 philosopher, whose name is a household 
 word for purity, zeal and power. He said: 
 ” What some say of this kind of contract, that 
 one side ought not to have any advantage 
 over the other, is neither practical nor true. 
 This would require perfect equality of skill 
 and judgment, which is seldom to be met 
 with. I might not have it in my power to 
 play with fairness a game of cards once in 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 63 
 
 a twelvemonth, if I must wait till I meet 
 with a person whose art, skill and judgment 
 are neither greater nor less than my own. 
 Nor is this equality requisite to the justice 
 of the contract. One man may give to 
 another the whole of the stake if he chooses, 
 and the other may justly accept it if it be 
 given him; much more, therefore, may one 
 give another an advantage in the chance 
 of winning the whole. The only proper 
 restriction is, that neither side have an ad- 
 vantage by means of which the other is not 
 aware. The same distinction holds of all 
 transactions and proceedings into which 
 chance enters; such as insurance, and specu- 
 lations in trade or in stocks.” 
 
 In this connection, with what force could 
 be quoted the sweet Nazarene in His parable 
 of the vineyard laborers: “ Friend, I do 
 thee no wrong; didst thou not agree with 
 me for a penny? Take that thine is, and 
 go thy way; I will give unto this last 
 even as unto thee. Is it not laivjul Joi' me 
 
64 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 to do what I will with mine own? (Matt. 
 20: 13, 14, 15.) 
 
 Here the mathematicians attempt to res- 
 cue moral philosophy. They would dem- 
 onstrate the improbability of luck. If asked 
 how it happened that a man won a hundred 
 thousand dollar prize, while his neighbor drew 
 a blank, the mathematician might tell you it 
 was chance; that there was a necessity for the 
 prize to fall somewhere, and that he who had 
 the most chances was the most likely to obtain 
 it. Such caviling could be dismissed with the 
 answer: You acknowledge the necessity of a 
 prize falling somewhere, then why not to me. 
 Surely my chances are as good as my neigh- 
 bors’, perhaps more so. It may be ; and what 
 maybe maybe now. “There is no prerog- 
 ative in human hours.” “There is a tide in 
 the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, 
 leads on to fortune.” 
 
 No intelligent gambler is a believer in 
 “ luck ” as a personal qtiality. He recognizes 
 the phenomena of chance. How they will 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 65 
 
 operate is not known to the mathematician 
 more than to him ; the “ chances ” may result 
 favorably or unfavorably for a gambler ; the 
 law may so work as to benefit him, or it may 
 not. Whether “ chance ” or “ luck,” is imma- 
 terial to the issue. 
 
 But seriously, for what do these aspirants 
 contend? A method of reasoning from the 
 happening of an event to the probabilities of 
 one or another cause; that the possible combi- 
 nations in a pack of cards, or a handful of 
 dice, may be computed, even when the ques- 
 tion involves the chances of a thousand dice, 
 or a thousand throws of one die. In its very 
 nature this is a vain-glorious pretension, and 
 upon what is it based ? An hypothesis pre- 
 senting the necessity of one or another out of 
 a certain number of consequences. In other 
 words, given an event as having happened, 
 and which might have been the consequence 
 of either of several causes, or explicable by 
 either of several hypotheses, the probabilities 
 can be i up erred. 
 
66 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 In this way is the philosophy of suppos- 
 ition substituted for that of caprice. We 
 are asked by the mathematician, at the very 
 outset, to assume something he has not 
 proved, and which is not susceptible of proof. 
 We are required to take for granted the 
 imaginary premises upon which his argu- 
 ment depends. Is this not the acme of in- 
 tellectual audacity? But having yielded his 
 antecedent proposition, what is the result? 
 A bare probability — a mere likelihood of the 
 occurrence of any event. 
 
 So much for the boasted “ Doctrine of 
 Chances.” Besides, I assert that every pre- 
 mise of the mathematician has been refuted 
 by my experience as a gamester. In the 
 proper place, I could disprove his every 
 theory with a fact For example: De 
 Morgan and Proctor tell us that it is not 
 probable seven could be thrown ten succes- 
 sive times, with a pair of dice. We are told, 
 on good authority, that in 1813, a Mr. Ogden 
 wagered 1,000 guineas that his opponent 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 67 
 
 would not perform this feat. That gentle- 
 man threw seven 7iine times running. 
 
 However, the mathematicians are not con- 
 cerned with the right or wrong of play for 
 money. They seek to demonstrate the in- 
 equalities of chance, hoping thus to dissuade 
 humanity from its pursuit. Their efforts are 
 idle. “ The proverb which advises us to 
 throw a sprat to catch a whale, shows that 
 mankind consider a chance of a gain to be 
 a benefit for which it is worth while to give 
 up a proportionate certainty.” These gentle- 
 men have extended their conjectures to the 
 risks of loss or gain in general commerce; 
 the probable continuity of life and duration 
 of marriage; the contingencies in political 
 results and the verdicts of juries; the distri- 
 butions of sex in births, and even the proba- 
 bility of error in any opinion that may be 
 generally received. In fact, should their 
 guesses be heeded by the world, enterprise 
 and hope would depart. 
 
 Another class of moralizers reject and 
 
68 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 deride the idea of “innate notions.” Truth, 
 they maintain, is not to be found in worn 
 out abstractions and moral senses, which are 
 the weak reproductions of material organisms. 
 In ethics, if they are to be followed, we must 
 set out with the convictions that our materials 
 are relative and not absolute, and that our 
 highest moral conceptions must partake of 
 the same character. As stated by Posnett, 
 systems of ethics, more or less perfect in 
 their day, have vanished in the progress of 
 society and mind. Systems of ethics, whether 
 we see or care to see it, are gliding from 
 amongst us at this moment, while others, 
 “ with strange faces are growing familiar 
 oy the slowness of their approach.” 
 
 To illustrate from Chenebix ; Nothing 
 can appear more definite than virtue ; yet, in 
 Asia, the term may denote submission; in 
 Europe and America, resistance; to Mussul- 
 mans war; to Christians, peace. Honor, too, 
 which its votaries describe as one and in- 
 corruptible, assumes various significations. 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 69 
 
 In some countries it prescribes revenge for 
 an injury received; in others, forgiveness. 
 Here, the violation of female chastity is a 
 disgrace, elsewhere it is a duty. To a 
 Mussulman the eating of pork is “ vile and 
 unclean, fills his soul with aversion, repug- 
 nance, disgust. To this habit their antipathy 
 is deep and intuitive. To the natives of 
 Western India, eating beef is sacrilegious 
 and revolting. In Spain, any other worship 
 than that established by the Catholic church 
 is impious and in the highest degree offen- 
 sive to God. The people of all Southern 
 Europe regard a married clergy as irreligious, 
 indecent, unchaste, gross and disgusting. 
 Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently 
 powerful they have endeavored to put down 
 all public, and nearly all private amusements: 
 music, dancing, the theatre and public games.” 
 
 This denomination, strange as it may 
 seem, also urge upon mankind what, in their 
 opinion, is the ” true moral rule” — the correct 
 standard of right. It is that which is estab- 
 
70 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTPI? 
 
 lished by authority, custom, or general con- 
 sent. A variable and doubtful criterion, 
 this, one would naturally suppose. How 
 severely has it been treated by Spencer and 
 Carpenter. Right and wrong are not essenti- 
 ally different. All moral distinctions are a 
 matter of arbitrary establishment by the 
 “ powers that be.” That which is statutory’, 
 customary, fashionable, or generally habitual, 
 is fit and proper. Conduct is purely a ques- 
 tion of majority and might. Place gambling 
 in the ascendant to-morrow and it would be 
 just; or, as the major part of humanity, 
 gamesters would be respectable; for an 
 opinion commonly accepted is the correct 
 opinion. With this as a guide, can the state 
 hold the gamester reprobate? 
 
 Society keeps changing its sentiments 
 with the centuries. Absolutely, we can never 
 know when it is right or when it is wrong. 
 The outlaw of one era is the idol of another. 
 Servetus was immolated by the Calvinists, 
 to-day he is a martyr to conscience. Bruno 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 71 
 
 was burned as a heretic, now he is the hero 
 of philosophy and science. 
 
 Galileo and Roger Bacon were once exe- 
 crated by the church — their bones lie in 
 unknown and unhonored graves. We regard 
 them as brave pioneers of human thought. 
 The formerly despised and hunted Christians 
 are become the greatest power on earth. 
 The Jew money-lender of the “dark ages’’ 
 (whom such as Front-de-Bceuf once tortured 
 with impunity) is the Rothschild of our 
 century — “ the guest of princes and the in- 
 stigator of commercial wars.” Shylock is 
 now an influential and courted capitalist. 
 “ All the glories of Alexander do not condone, 
 in our eyes, for his cruelty in crucifying the 
 brave defenders of Tyre, by thousands, along 
 the sea-shore; and if Solomon, with his 
 thousand wives and concubines, were to ap- 
 pear in London or New York to-morrow, 
 even the most frivolous circles would be 
 shocked, and Brigham Young, by contrast, 
 seem a domestic model.” 
 
72 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 From Caesar we learn that the Suevi held 
 their lands in common; that private property 
 in the soil did not obtain with the Gauls 
 and Germans. The same is true of the 
 North American Indians and some of the 
 Pacific Islanders. It is conceded, moreover, 
 that communistic principles were generally 
 prevalent in the earliest ages of the world. 
 Then, any attempt at exclusive individual 
 possession of land or chattel would have been 
 deemed a theft. 
 
 The mediaeval ideal was an ascetic and 
 monastic life. To-day, millions regard such 
 a course as unwise, if not wicked. Poverty, 
 heretofore esteemed as the badge of honor 
 and dignity, is by our era adjudged offensive. 
 Nomadism prevailed in a former age. Now 
 gypsies and tramps are the outcasts of society. 
 Regarding marriage, public opinion has varied 
 through all phases, without attaining finalit}'. 
 In earliest times how indiscriminate is the 
 tie — the monstrous relation of brother and 
 sister being the rule, rather than the excep- 
 
WHA'I' IS TRUTH? 
 
 73 
 
 tion. Polygamy prevails with one people 
 and polyandry among another. In India 
 and the Orient a wife is hidden from the 
 dearest friend, while in Africa a chief will 
 put his mate to bed with a guest. In Japan 
 young women, even of good birth, “ are free 
 in their intercourse with men, till they are 
 married; at Paris they are free after.” 
 
 In ancient Greece and Rome, again, mar- 
 riage was not the highest conception, and 
 largely “ a matter of convenience and house- 
 keeping.” Wives were little, if any better, 
 than slaves. The class of women known as 
 Hetairai (concubines and mistresses) were 
 openly honored and trusted by both political 
 and social leaders. The name of Aspasia 
 is closely associated with that of Pericles. 
 Theodota was the intimate of Socrates. 
 Diotima has been immortalized in the 
 “ Symposium ” of Plato. 
 
 The splendid ideal of our century is the 
 monogamic state — ‘‘the great theme of 
 romantic literature, and the climax of a 
 
74 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 myriad novels and poems.” In classic Greece 
 the idealistic model was male friendship — 
 comradeship. We have its type in the heroic 
 figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton. The 
 Theban Legion, or “Sacred Band,” exempli- 
 fied the principle. No man might enter 
 without his lover. Although annihilated at 
 the battle of Chaeronsea, it was never van- 
 quished. The literature of Greece and 
 Rome illuminate this exalted sentiment. 
 The writings of Pliny the younger, Cicero 
 and Lucian, are worthy of especial mention. 
 Many sweet and noble friendships are em- 
 balmed in the poetry of Hellas and Latium; 
 Demetrius and Antiphilus ; Damon and 
 Pythias; Phocion and Nicoles; Glaucus and 
 Diomedes; Philades and Orestes; Cicero and 
 Atticus; Socrates and Alcibiades; Lucilius 
 and Brutus; Tiberius Gracchus and Blossius; 
 Gains Gracchus and Licinus. 
 
 Suicide was not thought unworthy by the 
 ancients. It was resorted to by Anthony, 
 Brutus, Cassius, Cato, and Zeno. To-day, 
 
V/HAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 75 
 
 the attempt is a crime, and its consummation 
 a disgrace. In Europe and America it is 
 felo-de-se. Infanticide is common in many 
 parts of Asia and Africa. To-day the feudal 
 baron would be adjudged a freebooter; the 
 knight-errant a brawling vagabond. A nine- 
 teenth century man may beat his wife within 
 an inch of her life, and get but three months. 
 For stealing a suit of clothes he would 
 be “sent up” for years. So “gambling 
 on ’change is now respectable enough, but 
 pitch and toss for halfpence is low, and must 
 be dealt with by the police. We know that 
 when questions connected with life contin- 
 gencies were first considered, it was regarded 
 as most deliberate gambling to be in any 
 way concerned in buying or selling such 
 articles as annuities, or any interests depend- 
 ing upon them.” The age boasts of an 
 advance in the humanities; and yet, public 
 opinion permits extravagance and selfishness 
 in the rich while the poor are starving. Our 
 educated classes, generally, approve the vivi- 
 
76 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 section of animals. In ancient Egypt it would 
 have been stigmatized as the most abomin- 
 able of crimes. 
 
 From age to age, likewise, law represents 
 the code of the dominant or ruling class — at 
 all times only valid because it is the code 
 of those in power. How often used by 
 “authority” for selfish purposes, may be read 
 on every page of history. Monarchy, absolute 
 or limited, is a synonym for injustice. Feudal- 
 ism is another term for murder, rapine and 
 extortion. In Spain, the lands of nobles 
 were long exempted from direct taxation. 
 For centuries the Hungarian turnpikes were 
 free to the aristocracy. Prior to the revol- 
 ution in France, all burdens of state devolved 
 upon the lower classes. Fess than two 
 centuries ago Scotch lairds exported their 
 peasantry into slavery. Students will recall 
 the “Black Act” of George I., and the 
 “Inclosure Faws” of England. Until quite 
 recently, slavery existed in Europe and 
 America; nor has the institution wholl}" dis- 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 77 
 
 appeared from the earth. Legislation is 
 mainly in the interest of the wealthy and 
 powerful. Congress and legislatures are 
 making the rich richer, and the poor poorer. 
 Government is largely devoted to the creation 
 and upholding of corporations, trusts, mon- 
 opolies, subsidies and extortionate tariffs. 
 What care the politicians for manhood ? 
 Wealth is their God. 
 
 “ Let your rule be the greatest happiness 
 to the greatest number,” interposes another 
 authority. But are men agreed in their 
 definition of “greatest happiness?” Dif- 
 ferent notions of it are entertained in all 
 ages, amongst every people, by each class. 
 “To the wandering gypsy a home is tiresome, 
 whilst a Swiss is miserable without one. Pro- 
 gress is necessary to the Anglo-Saxons ; on 
 the other hand, the Esquimaux are content 
 in their squalid poverty, have no latent 
 wants, and are still what they were in the 
 days of Tacitus. An Irishman delights in 
 a row, a Chinaman in ceremonies and pagean- 
 
78 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 try, and the usually apathetic Javanese gets 
 vociferously enthusiastic over a cock-fight. 
 The heaven of the Hebrew is a city of gold 
 and precious stones, with an abundance of 
 corn and wine; that of the Turk, a harem 
 peopled by Houris; that of the American 
 Indian, a happy hunting-ground; in the Norse 
 paradise there were to be daily battles, with 
 magical healing of wounds. It was, seem- 
 ingly, the opinion of Lycurgus, that perfect 
 physical development was the chief essential 
 to human felicity; Plotinus, on the contrary, 
 was so purely ideal in his aspirations as to 
 be ashamed of his body. To a miserly 
 Elwes, the hoarding of money was the only 
 enjoyment of life; but the philanthropic Day 
 could find no pleasurable employment, save 
 in its distribution.” 
 
 Francis, Duke of La Rochefoucault, 
 likened the soul of man unto a medal, so 
 constructed that it may represent either a 
 saint or a devil. Montaigne, also, said the 
 soul of man was double-faced; the inner 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 79 
 
 beamed upon self-love, while the outer wore 
 a mask. Voltaire was a scoffer: a master 
 of satire, who ridiculed without mercy every 
 human weakness. In “Zadig” and “ Micro- 
 megas” he mocked the ignorance and self- 
 conceit of mankind. His “ Memnon,” the 
 ‘ Wise Memnon,” who, in the morning, fore- 
 swore all women, made a vow of temperance, 
 renounced gaming and quarreling, and deter- 
 mined never to be seen at court, was, before 
 the night of the same day, cheated and 
 robbed by a female, got drunk, gamed, 
 quarreled with his most intimate friend, and 
 made a visit to court, where everyone laughed 
 at him. The moral of ‘‘Candide, or the 
 Optimist,” is, as interpreted by Smollett, 
 that nothing is more absurd than the exercise 
 of human reason; that nothing is more futile 
 and frivolous than the cultivation of phil- 
 osophy ; that mankind are savages, who 
 devour one another. This is cynicism, pure 
 and simple. I cannot endure a creed so 
 ghastly: a philosophy that suspects Socrates 
 
So 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 of incontinence, charges Epicurus with prodi- 
 gality, accuses Aristotle of covetousness, and 
 can say of Seneca that “ he had but the single 
 virtue of concealing his vices.” Horace took 
 a more charitable view of the moral philoso- 
 phers, and ascribed their weakness to inability 
 rather than hypocrisy. The poet says that 
 men “ upon the stage of this world are like 
 a company of travelers whom night has sur- 
 prised as they are passing through a forest; 
 they walk on, relying upon the guide, who 
 immediately misleads them through ignor- 
 ance. All of them use what care they can 
 to find the beaten path again ; everj^one 
 takes a different path, and is in good hopes 
 his is the best; the more they fill themselves 
 with these vain imaginations the farther 
 they wander; but though they wander a dif- 
 ferent way, yet it proceeds from one and 
 the same cause; ’tis the guide that misled 
 them, and the obscurity of the night hinders 
 them from recovering the right road.” 
 
 In truth, the mind of man, unaided by 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 Divine light, is not able to determine what 
 is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. In 
 the realm of morals, man is to be guided 
 only by the decrees of God, if known. For 
 those who recognize the Bible as His word, 
 the way is clear. Aside from this, the path 
 is dark and uncertain. But nowhere in 
 either the Old or New Testament, is gambling 
 forbidden. Not a word did Moses or Jesus 
 utter against it, as a general principle, or 
 in any of its particular forms. What is com- 
 manded by God is our only test of right 
 and wrong. Theology is of man, and yet 
 it is a fact that gambling, in itself, is not 
 inconsistent with the profession of any creed 
 in Christendom. The ablest theologian can- 
 not successfully challenge this proposition. 
 
 For the sake of argument, heretofore, I 
 have granted the moral freedom of man. 
 The fact is, I deny his “ liberty,” save in the 
 most restricted sense. I am convinced every 
 action is determined by the resultant force 
 of conflicting motives. However, the possible 
 
82 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 autonomy of man is not necessary to a con 
 sideration of what it is right or best to do. 
 It is only when we ask about the conduct of 
 man, in his relation to the law, that it is 
 important to know whether he could have 
 done otherwise. I reserve the topic for a 
 subsequent chapter. 
 
 Be this as it may, certain conclusions are 
 obvious to the impartial observer. It is 
 very difficult, if not impossible, to draw a 
 strict boundary between the virtues and vices. 
 Courage should not be carried to the point 
 of rashness. Timidity is the abuse of pru- 
 dence. Generosity can degenerate into im- 
 providence. Reverence might merge into 
 credulity and superstition. Arrogance is the 
 extreme of self-respect. Chastity is over- 
 done by the monastic. Some writers, in fact, 
 deny a fixed line between the virtuous and 
 vicious passions; this class boldly maintain 
 a place for both vices and virtues. Hatred 
 may be just and anger magnificent. Although 
 out of place in a drawing-room, obstinacy is 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 83 
 
 a virtue on the field of battle. Love is divine 
 and lust monstrous. Are they not yoke- 
 fellows? Reformers, so called, are impossible 
 without stupid candor and impassive blunt- 
 ness. Timidity, on the other hand, is the 
 defect of a sensitive temperament. Sensu- 
 ality underlies the domain of art, painting, 
 sculpture and music. 
 
 This is suggested by Plato in the “ Phsc- 
 drus” — an allegory of the soul, wherein the 
 spirit of man is depicted as a chariot to which 
 are attached a white and black horse. The 
 first typifies our higher and the latter our 
 lower passions. 
 
 Mr. Lecky writes in his “ History of 
 Morals,” that in society certain defects 
 necessarily accompany certain excellencies 
 of character. He remarks, “ Had the Irish 
 peasants been less chaste they would have 
 been more prosperous.” ” Habitual liars and 
 habitual cheats have been industrious, amiable 
 and prudent.” “Civilization is not favorable 
 to self-sacrifice, reverence, enthusiasm or 
 
84 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 chastity.” He declares of the gambling- 
 table, ” that it fosters a moral nerve and 
 calmness scarcely exhibited in equal perfec- 
 tion in any other sphere — a fact which Bret 
 Harte has finely illustrated in his character 
 of Mr. John Oakhurst, in the ‘ Outcasts of 
 Poker Flat.’ ” 
 
 This thought is boldly illustrated by 
 Mandeville, in his “ F'able of the Bees:” 
 
 “These were called knaves, but, bar the name, 
 
 The grave industrious were the same: 
 
 All trades and places knew some cheat, 
 
 No calling was without deceit. 
 
 The root of evil, avarice. 
 
 That damn’d, ill-natured, baneful vice, 
 
 Was slave to prodigality, 
 
 That noble sin; whilst luxury 
 Employed a million of the poor, 
 
 And odious pride a million more : 
 
 Envy, itself, and vanity 
 Were ministers of iudustiy, 
 
 Their darling folly, fickleness, 
 
 In diet, furniture and dress, 
 
 That strange, ridiculous vice, was made 
 The very wheel that turned the trade.” 
 
 The author of this unique production 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 85 
 
 announced that his main design was to in- 
 dicate the impossibility of enjoying all the 
 most elegant comforts of life “ that are to 
 be met with in an industrious, wealthy and 
 powerful nation, and at the same time be 
 blessed with all the virtue and innocence 
 that can be wished for in a golden age; 
 from thence to expose the folly and unreason- 
 ableness of those that, desirous of being an 
 opulent and flourishing people, are wonder- 
 fully greedy after all the benefits they can 
 receive as such, are yet always murmuring 
 against those vices and inconveniences, that 
 from the beginning of the world to the present 
 day, have been inseparable from all the 
 kingdoms and states that ever were formed 
 for strength, riches and politeness.” 
 
 “To do this, I first slightly touch upon 
 some of the faults and corruptions the several 
 professions and callings are generally charged 
 with. After that I show that those very 
 vices of every particular person, by skillful 
 management, were made subservient to the 
 
86 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 grandeur* and worldly happiness of the whole. 
 Lastly, by setting forth what of necessity 
 must be the consequence of general honesty, 
 virtue, innocence, content and temperance, 
 I demonstrate that if mankind could be cured 
 of the failings they are naturally guilty of, 
 they would cease to be capable of being 
 raised into such vast, potent, and polite 
 societies, as they have been under the several 
 commonwealths and monarchies that have 
 flourished since creation.” 
 
 Not yet, then, have we found the human 
 standard by which the gambler is to be 
 denounced. 
 
 Gamblers are accused of avarice, and an 
 inordinate desire for wealth. As a rule, 
 the gamester is not penurious. A miserly 
 or covetous grasp of money is inconsistent 
 with his vocation. Concede the accusation, 
 and is he alone? Is he more greedy of 
 gain than other men? History refutes the 
 charge. Money is the god of the world. 
 Get enormous wealth is the cry, no matter 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 87 
 
 how; no matter how many impoverished 
 widows and squalid orphans are crying out 
 to heaven, day and night, against you; and 
 such slavish adulation as the world knows 
 not beside are yours. The passion for 
 wealth increases gradually, as its end is 
 achieved, the world over. Its effects are 
 manifest wherever men strive for gold. 
 
 “Gold! gold! gold! gold! 
 
 Br ight and yellow, hard and cold, 
 
 Molten, graven, hammered, rolled; 
 
 Heavy to get, and light to hold ; 
 
 Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold ; 
 
 Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; 
 
 Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old 
 To the very verge of the church yard mould. 
 
 Price of many a crime untold ; 
 
 Gold! gold! gold! gold !” — Thomas Hood. 
 
 The morale of gambling is not to be 
 determined by political economy, which is 
 not a part of moral philosophy. It is 
 not founded on the imperations of duty, 
 but upon the adequate footing of desirable- 
 ness of self-interest. In the language of 
 Prof. Perry: “ One word circumscribes the 
 
88 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 field of morals, ought. One word defines 
 the field of economy, expediency.” So far 
 as it is a science, political economy is cold 
 and selfish; “budded on monopoly values.” 
 Judged by such a standard, gambling would 
 be right, if expedient. 
 
 Yes, but is not gambling a destructive 
 luxury? Is it not a wasteful expenditure 
 of money? I answer, what is luxury, and 
 is it always an evil? Roscher well says: 
 “ The idea conveyed by the word is an 
 essentially relative one.” Every individual 
 calls all expenditure with which he chooses 
 to dispense, a luxury. The same is true of 
 every age and nation. “ ’Tis a word with- 
 out any specific idea,” wrote Voltaire, “much 
 such another expression as when we say 
 Eastern and Western hemispheres: in fact, 
 there is no such thing as East and West; 
 there is no fixed point where the earth 
 rises and sets; or, if you will, every point 
 on it is, at the same time. East and West. 
 It is the same with regard to luxury; for 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 89 
 
 either there is no such thing, or else it is 
 in all places alike. . . . Do we under- 
 
 stand by luxury the expense of an opulent 
 person? Must he, then, live like the poor, 
 he whose profusion, alone, is sufficient to 
 maintain the poor? Expensiveness should 
 be the thermometer of a private person’s 
 fortune, as general luxury is the infallible 
 mark of a powerful and flourishing empire. 
 . . . Money is made for circulation. He 
 
 who hoards it is a bad citizen, and even 
 a bad economist. It is by dissipating it 
 we render ourselves useful to our country 
 and ourselves.” David Hume also thought 
 the word of uncertain signification. He 
 said: “The bound between virtue and vice 
 cannot liere be exactly fixed, more than 
 in other moral subjects. To imagine that 
 the gratification of any sense, or the 
 indulging of any delicacy, is of itself a 
 vice, can never enter into a head that is 
 not disordered by the frenzies of enthusi- 
 asm. These indulgences are only vices. 
 
go WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 when they are pursued at the expense of 
 some virtue, as liberality of charity; in 
 like manner as they are follies, when a 
 man ruins his fortune and reduces himself 
 to want and beggary.” Again, William 
 Roscher, the political economist, was of 
 opinion that “ prodigality is less odious 
 than avarice; less irreconcilable with certain 
 virtues;” and that ‘‘prodigality, directly or 
 indirectly, increases the demand for com- 
 modities.” We know the Epicureans and 
 Stoics were reproached with being bad 
 citizens, because their moderation was a 
 hindrance to trade. Gambling is no more 
 a luxury than many other practices of man- 
 kind. Some persons may prefer it as a 
 pastime to any other form of luxury. Who 
 is to decide a question of taste and ex- 
 pense but the individual concerned? One 
 man indulges lavishly in pictures, books, 
 and clothes ; another is prodigal in the 
 matter of tobacco and liquors; a third de- 
 lights in the excitement of chance. All 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 91 
 
 these inclinations are luxurious. Which is 
 preferable to each, is not for society to de- 
 termine in one case, more than in the 
 others. In a word, the phases of luxury 
 are so variable and extensive that it is 
 equally unjust and impracticable for the 
 state to discriminate unfavorably. 
 
 The gambler is said to be idle and non- 
 productive: that a quid pro quo is not given 
 for what he receives. What is meant here 
 by idleness and non-production? Does it 
 signify that labor is the proper basis of ex- 
 changeable value: the only just source of 
 what is called wealth? If so, the condem- 
 nation includes all who obtain wealth with- 
 out working for it. Suppose it be admitted 
 that service is the one equitable title to pro- 
 perty. What, then, of assumed rights, in 
 the form of profits, dividends, rent and 
 interest? If true wealth is the outcome of 
 physical labor, are not banker, broker, middle- 
 man, landlord, capitalist, gentleman of leis- 
 ure and gambler on the same footing. 
 
92 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 Bishop Jewel once said: “If I lend ^loo, 
 and for it covenant to receive ^105, or any 
 other sum greater than was the sum I did 
 lend, this is that we call usury: such a kind 
 of bargaining as no good man, or godly 
 man, ever used.’’ Many contend that in- 
 terest contributes nothing to the support of 
 society, but is a tax on labor. Those who 
 receive it are said to be extortioners who 
 live on the gains of other people. Christ, 
 Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mahomet all put 
 usury in the category of forbidden sins. 
 
 It is discountenanced by Ezekiel, Moses, 
 David, Aristotle, Cato, St. Basil, Masse, 
 Bacon, Buxton, Dr. Wilson and Fenton. 
 Ricardo, the great economist, was of the 
 opinion that rent is not a creation of wealth, 
 and adds nothing to the necessaries, con- 
 veniences and enjoyments of society. Adam 
 Smith, the father of political econom}-, con- 
 sidered rent as a monopoly price paid for 
 the use of land. Were this true, the owner 
 of a house, when it had paid for itself, could 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 93 
 
 rightfully charge for its use, the cost of his 
 labor in transferring it to you, and the 
 amount of wear and tear. 
 
 It is said of the gambler that he is not 
 a man of equivalents. But, if wealth is to 
 be a question of exact equality in values 
 and labor, then must business generally be 
 condemned. The great legists, Pomponius 
 and Paulus, unblushingly said, that “ In buy- 
 ing and selling, a man has a natural right 
 to purchase for a small price what is really 
 more valuable, and to sell at a high price 
 what is less valuable, and for each to over- 
 reach the other.” Harsh as this may seem, 
 it but voiced the principles of trade in 
 every age of the world. “Trade is war,” 
 said the ancient proverb; “and as a nail 
 between the stone joints, so does sin stick 
 fast between buying and selling.” Business 
 is advantage-taking erected into a system. 
 Get as much more than you give as is pos- 
 sible. A thing is worth what it will bring. 
 You may rightfully take from another what 
 
94 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 he is compelled to yield. Exchange is noc 
 a rendering of equivalent for equivalent; 
 but an effort to get the largest possible 
 amount of another’s property, or services, 
 for the least possible return. In business, 
 justice and mercy are daily displaced by ex- 
 tortion and mastership ; “ the producing 
 
 classes are vassal to the speculating classes; 
 the creators of wealth to its stealthy pos- 
 sessors.” 
 
 The Christian Fathers deprecated trade. 
 “To seek to enrich one’s self is in itself 
 unjust,” said Clement; “since it aims at ap- 
 propriating an unfair share of what was in- 
 tended for the common use of men.” “If 
 covetousness is removed,” argued Tertullian, 
 “ there is no reason for gain, and, if there 
 is no reason for gain, there is no need of 
 trade.” Jerome taught that “ as the trader 
 did not himself add to the value of his 
 wares, therefore, if he gained more for them 
 than he paid, his gain must be another’s 
 loss.” To Augustine, “business in itself is 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 95 
 
 an evil, for it turns men from seeking true 
 rest, which is God.” Aquinas decided “that 
 to buy a thing for less, or sell a thing for 
 more than its value is, in itself, unallowable 
 and unjust,” 
 
 It has been estimated by Bastiat, Karl 
 Marx and Nordau, that laborers are un- 
 justly deprived of the value of four days 
 labor in each week. Terrible is the 
 injustice to wage-earners, the world over, 
 if the deductions of Carpenter and Godwin 
 are to be accepted. “Behold the hire of 
 the laborers which is of you kept back by 
 fraud, crieth: and the cries of them are 
 entered into the ears of the Lord of Saba- 
 oth.” Proudhon and Spencer have revealed 
 the “economic’s lies” of modern society. 
 “ The great game of the business world is 
 the game of getting on,” wrote John Ruskin; 
 “not of everybodies getting on, but of some- 
 body getting on. What to one family is 
 the game of getting on, to one thousand 
 families is the game of not getting on. Nay, 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 q6 
 
 you say, they have all their chance. Yes, 
 so has every one in a lottery, but there 
 must always be the same number of blanks. 
 Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and in- 
 telligence that take the lead, but blind 
 chance. What then! do you think the old 
 practice that they should take who have the 
 power, and they should keep who can, is 
 less iniquitous when the power has become 
 the power of brains instead of fist?” 
 
 Is this a world of equivalents in labor? 
 What is the ratio of riches awarded to those 
 who toil? In i860, the net average income 
 was but three per cent. Yet, for that year 
 the income of bare money (which needs 
 no food, clothing or shelter), was all the 
 way from five to thirty per cent. In Eng- 
 land 30,000,000 people are taxed that interest 
 may be paid to 300,000. In 1870, the interest 
 on the national debts of the world amounted 
 to $1,700,000,000. This rate in nine 3'ears 
 would absorb a sum equal to the entire 
 property of this country in 1870. We are 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 97 
 
 informed that trade is annually taxed (in- 
 terest on capital) about $200,000,000, for 
 which not one dollar of actual service is 
 rendered. Is interest on “watered” stock 
 any better than theft? 
 
 A world of equivalents, indeed ! In 
 our cities five per cent of the population 
 own more property than ninety-five per 
 cent; and twenty per cent of the nation 
 own more than the remaining eighty per 
 cent. At the present rate of increase, 
 within thirty years, 100,000 persons will own 
 four-fifths of all the property in the United 
 States. In twenty-five years the number 
 of our people who own their homes has 
 decreased from five-eighths to three-eighths. 
 In New York City more than 1,100,000 
 persons are dwelling in tenement houses. 
 “ In 1889, the farm mortgages in the western 
 states amounted to three billion four hun- 
 dred and twenty-two million dollars'.' In 
 England, to-day, there are less than 30,000 
 landed proprietors — one half of the country 
 
98 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 is owned by 150 men. Twelve men own 
 one-half of Scotland. The working classes 
 of the United Kingdom own but a thirtieth 
 part of the total real and personal property. 
 
 Strictly considered, two things are said 
 to be equivalent when they are “ equal in 
 value.” Generally speaking, however, inter- 
 changes are seldom, if ever, “alike in worth.” 
 The equality of labor for labor does not 
 occur once in millions of times. “\’alue” 
 is an indefinite term. Into “worth” enters 
 such intangible qualities as whim, caprice, 
 taste, fancy, ambition, pride, habit, desire, 
 appetite, passion and amusement. Exact 
 and utilitarian standards would destroy belle 
 lettres and the fine arts; dissipate recreation 
 and the amenities of life. Are there pre- 
 cise “work-a-day” equivalents for literature, 
 music, sculpture, painting; for the opera, the 
 theatre, the salon, the club-room? Gaming 
 is an amusement for many persons. Thous- 
 ands enjoy the excitements of chance. It 
 stimulates their spirits above the cares and 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 99 
 
 drudgery of existence. Such men prefer 
 a game to either book, piano or cigar. 
 With them it is not a question of utility 
 but of diversion. Is the value of enter- 
 tainment to be measured in muscle or 
 metal? 
 
 Wherein, essentially, does gaming differ 
 from speculation or insurance? All have 
 their foundation in chance. Contingencies 
 and uncertainties enter into each as a con- 
 sideration for investment. A gamester bets 
 upon the turn of a card, or the cast of a 
 die. The speculator purchases in antici- 
 pation of contingent advance in the price 
 of a commodity. A corporation indemni- 
 fies an individual, conditionally, against pos- 
 sible death or loss by fire. In neither 
 instance can the result be foretold: the 
 gamester may or may not win, the specu- 
 lator may or may not realize a profit, the 
 assured may or may not forfeit his life 
 policy, or lose by fire. In every transaction, 
 fortuity is the controlling element; if for 
 
lOO 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 this reason any one is invalid or immoral, 
 so are the others. Large sums have been 
 won and lost at cards. Many fortunes had 
 their origin in speculation: also, it has been 
 productive of wide-spread disaster, distress 
 and despair. Insurance companies have 
 benefited thousands of widows and orphans. 
 Innumerable are the families upon whom 
 indigence has fallen through the forfeiture 
 of policies. Forfeited premiums to the 
 amount of millions are now invested in 
 palatial structures throughout the civilized 
 world. Analysis might show in gaming, 
 speculation and insurance, that at least the 
 equities and ethics are even. 
 
 View the subject as we may, ye gamester, 
 “where is thine accuser?” To all men he 
 can say ; “ He that is without sin among 
 you, let him first cast a stone.” 
 
 Now, some one may ask: “Is not gamb- 
 ling immoral to the extent it may induce a 
 reliance upon chance for a livelihood, instead 
 of patient industry.” I might reply: “What 
 
WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 lOI 
 
 is industry, as known to political economy; 
 and what proportion of the world’s wealth 
 is a result of direct personal exertion ? ” 
 But, generally, men are rational creatures, 
 and do not depend upon games of chance 
 for a living. The credulous men are rela- 
 tively few who rely entirely upon the out- 
 come of chance in games as a business; 
 and those few are at least on a par in 
 
 wisdom and ethics with the millions who 
 gamble in future prices of stocks, grain, 
 
 and other commodities. “Ah! but you for- 
 get,” rejoins my critic, “that in other pur- 
 suits a man produces something by his in- 
 dustry, or contributes to that result in- 
 
 directly, whereas in gambling nothing is 
 produced.” I consider this erroneous, in 
 the face of social experience, as has been 
 indicated heretofore. It may be as soundly 
 said, that a “ man has no right to invest 
 his money in cattle, or lands, or bonds, 
 
 unless his labor is put in with it. A man 
 buys a horse and hires him to his neighbor. 
 
102 
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 Is he entitled to the money his horse earns 
 for him ? He invests in bonds at fifty 
 cents on the dollar. Does he not hope 
 they will appreciate in value, until they 
 are worth dollar for dollar? He pays 
 $1000 for a piece of land. In two or three 
 years, perhaps, his neighbors have invested 
 around him, and have improved their pro- 
 perties, and he finds that his land will sell 
 for $2000. His labor did not contribute 
 to that result. He risked his capital ex- 
 actly as he would have done in a game 
 of chance.” 
 
I 
 
 Ube destinies; 
 
 or, 
 
 ^be IReign of ILaw, 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 XTbe IDestintes; or, XEbe IRetgn of Xaw. 
 
 N one occasion, an aged scholar so- 
 
 liloquized as follows : Homer was 
 
 at the same time beggar and poet : his 
 mouth more often filled with verses than 
 with bread, Plautus turned a mill that he 
 might live. Menander, Cratinus and Ter- 
 rence were drowned; Empedocles lost in the 
 crater of Mount Etna; Euripides and Her- 
 aclitus torn to pieces by dogs; Hesiod, 
 Archilochus and Ibychus, murdered. Sappho 
 threw herself from a precipice. Condemned 
 by a tyrant, respectively, Seneca, Lucan, 
 and Petronius Arbiter, cut their veins and 
 bled to death. Poison terminated the lives 
 of Socrates, Demosthenes and Lucretius. 
 
 ( 105 ) 
 
I06 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 “In Plutarch, we read of ‘two eminent 
 persons, whose names were Attis, the one 
 a Syrian, the other of Arcadia, both were 
 slain by a wild boar; of two, whose names 
 were Acteon, one was torn to pieces by his 
 dog, the other by assassins; of two famous 
 Scipios, one overthrew the Carthagenians 
 in war, the other totally destroyed them; 
 four of the most warlike commanders of 
 antiquity had but one eye — Philip, Antig- 
 onous, Hannibal and Sertorius.’ 
 
 “ Paul Borghese, a writer of rhythmic verse, 
 died of starvation. Tasso, himself the most 
 amiable of poets, lived like a pauper, and 
 passed away in an asylum. Bentivoglio, a 
 creator of classic comedies, in the misery 
 of his old age, was refused admittance to 
 an hospital he had founded. Cervantes 
 died of hunger, and Camoens ended his 
 days in an almshouse. The body of \Hu- 
 gelas was disposed of to surgeons that 
 his debts might be paid. Spencer was for- 
 saken and neglected in his old age. Decker, 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 107 
 
 Gotten, Savage and Lloyd breathed their 
 last in jails. 
 
 “Might not these men have said, ‘Who 
 can shut out fate?’ Were they the sport 
 of circumstances, or could circumstances 
 have been made their sport? Was each in- 
 dependent of fatality? Was he free from 
 destiny; or, was he subject to an unalter- 
 able course — an invincible necessity?’’ 
 
 The query of this venerable sage has 
 been that of civilized man in every age. 
 Coming into the world with the dawn of 
 philosophy, it will remain until the veil of 
 Isis is uplifted. Profoundest wisdom has 
 ever taught the subordination of man to 
 a higher law, by which his career is largely 
 determined from the beginning. Investi- 
 gation will disclose that such, to-day, is the 
 real opinion of a vast majority of mankind. 
 
 The thought was ascendant in the liter- 
 ature and religion of the ancient Greeks. 
 Their Moira was a personification of law; 
 the Goddess of Destiny, who assigned to 
 
io8 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 everyone his fate, or “share.” At the birth 
 of man she spun the thread of his future 
 life, pursued his footsteps, and directed the 
 consequences of his actions, according to 
 the decrees of Zeus. By some she was 
 conceived as a fatal divinity, who directed 
 human affairs in such a manner as to re- 
 store the right proportions or equilibrium, 
 wherever it had been disturbed; who meas- 
 ured out happiness and unhappiness, and 
 allotted losses and sufferings to him who 
 was blest with too frequent gifts of Fortune, 
 to the end he might be humbled into ac- 
 knowledging the existence of bounds beyond 
 which human happiness cannot proceed with 
 safety. 
 
 To Homer she was not an absolute 
 sovereign of both heaven and earth, to whom 
 even the gods must bow; but merely ap- 
 portioned the fate of men, as counseled 
 by Deity. In the theology of Hesiod there 
 were three: Clotho, the spinning fate; Lach- 
 esis, who assigned to man his fate; and 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 1 09 
 
 Atropo, who decreed a fate that could not 
 be avoided. This conception answered to 
 the Teutonic Norns, or Weird Sisters. What 
 was to the earlier poets of Greece a person, 
 /Eschylus apprehended as a principle ; a 
 law for both gods and men; an over-ruling, 
 ever-present, inevitable necessity, against 
 which it is vain to contend, and from which 
 it is hopeless to escape. “ His characters 
 are pre-determined parricides, murderers and 
 adulterers.” For instance, the destiny of 
 the pious Amphiaraus led him to that death 
 his wisdom foresaw; fate impelled him to the 
 society his judgment forbade. Good Ete- 
 ocles, too, lies under the band of fate, but 
 seeks not to avert the doom. “ Stern, un- 
 compromising, he will meet the man he 
 must slay, by whom he must himself fall.” 
 The inexorable destiny of Avschylus was 
 to Sophocles and Plato an ordering of the 
 divine will. 
 
 Two great schools of philosophy divided 
 the educated opinion of classic Greece and 
 
I lO 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 Rome. The tenets of both were fatalistic 
 in tendency. What was to the Epicurean 
 a “chance” appealed to the Stoic as “law.” 
 Man, taught Epicurus, is a mere buffet of 
 a blind fatality. The phenomenon of life, 
 said Stoicism, is governed with iron sway 
 by an imminent necessity of reason. “ Man 
 should be free from passion,” preached 
 Zeno, “unmoved by joy or grief, and submit 
 without complaint to the unavoidable power 
 by which all things are governed.” 
 
 Buddhism is the doctrine taught ly Gau- 
 tama, the Hindoo sage, in the sixth century, 
 B.C.; now the belief of a greater part of 
 central and eastern Asia and the Indian 
 Islands. In this creed, fatality is a cardinal 
 principle. Sir Edwin Arnold has designated 
 it “ The Light of Asia.” The great religion 
 of Brahma, also, teaches that everything is 
 subject to a divinely appointed necessity. 
 It boasts a philosophy that was the admir- 
 ation of Bruno, Schelling, Hegel, and Draper. 
 Manes declared that the moral universe was 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 I I I 
 
 controlled by two supreme principles; one 
 the author of all good, the other the author 
 of all evil. The highest conception of Mo- 
 hammed is an arbitrary and inexorable law. 
 In the Koran we read; “No man can antici- 
 pate or postpone his end. Death will over- 
 take us, even in lofty towers. From the 
 beginning, God hath settled the place in 
 which each man shall die.” The Persian 
 poet sings: “The destinies ride their horses 
 by night. No man can by flight escape his 
 fate. Whether asleep in bed or in the storm 
 of battle, the angel of death will find thee.” 
 “ I am convinced,” saith Ali, “ that the affairs 
 of men go by divine decree, and not by our 
 administration.” 
 
 In the philosophy of Solomon, as recorded 
 in Ecclesiastes, we read: “The thing that 
 hath been, it is that which shall be; and 
 that which is done is that which shall be 
 done: and there is no new thing under the 
 sun. . . . To everything there is a 
 
 season, and a time to every purpose under 
 
I I 2 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 the heaven: a time to be born, and a time 
 to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck 
 up that which is planted; a time to kill, 
 and a time to heal; a time to break down, 
 and a time to build up; a time to mourn, 
 and a time to dance; a time to cast away 
 stones, and a time to gather stones together; 
 a time to embrace, and a time to refrain 
 from embracing; a time to get, and a time 
 to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast 
 away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; 
 a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 
 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time 
 of war, and a time of peace.” 
 
 With Christianity came the dogma of 
 “predestination” and “election.” This was 
 promulgated, on the very threshold, by Paul, 
 a man of the sublimest genius; adorable, 
 venerable and heroic. Thus he addressed 
 the church at Rome: “And we know that 
 all things work together for good to them 
 that love God, — to them who are the called 
 according to His purpose. For whom he 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 II3 
 
 did foreknow, he also did predestinate to 
 be conformed to the image of his Son, that 
 he might be first born among many brethren. 
 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them 
 he also called: and whom he called, them 
 he also justified: and whom he justified, 
 them he also glorified. What shall we say 
 to these things? If God be for us, who 
 can be against us?” 
 
 This idea is necessarily involved in the 
 theology of St. Augustine, who maintained 
 that “ grace is effectual from its nature, 
 absolutely and morally, not relatively and 
 gradually.” It remained for John Calvin 
 to erect the assertions of Paul into a cognate 
 and masterly system. He insisted upon the 
 purpose of God from eternity, respecting 
 all events. 
 
 Briefly, of the religion of the world, 
 to-day, ninety per cent are predestinarian 
 in theory or practice, consciously or un- 
 consciously. Of Christendom, those who 
 agree with Arminius are in a small min- 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 II4 
 
 ority, relatively: — a minority whose creed 
 involves not only the limitation of divine 
 knowledge, but a paralysis of divine power 
 and the moral chaos of a universe. 
 That religion is necessarily puerile and un- 
 philosophic which attempts to reconcile the 
 omnipotence of God with the freedom of 
 man. Either Nature is ordered for the 
 best — so as to produce the highest good; 
 or else, everything is purposeless and for 
 the worst. In a word, either optimism or 
 pessimism must wholly prevail: logically, a 
 middle ground is impossible. We must 
 choose between Leibnitz or Schopenhaue:*. 
 
 Literature and religion aside, the greatest 
 intellects have promulgated a “ philosophy 
 of necessity.” Everything that exists, wrote 
 Oersted in substance, depends upon the past, 
 prepares the future, and is related to the 
 whole. ” Everything throughout creation is 
 governed by law : but over most of the 
 tracts that come within the active experi- 
 ence of mankind, the governing hand is so 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 II5 
 
 secret and remote, that until very large 
 numerical masses are brought under the 
 eye at once, the controlling power is not 
 detected.” Jonathan Edwards said: “Noth- 
 ing comes to pass without a cause. What is 
 self-existent must be from eternity, and must 
 be unchangeable; but as to all things that 
 begin to be, they are not self-existent, and 
 therefore must have some foundation for 
 their existence without themselves.” Spin- 
 oza urged that “ In no mind is there an 
 absolute or free volition; but it is deter- 
 mined to choose this or that by a cause, 
 which likewise has been fixed by another, 
 and this again by a third, and so on for- 
 ever.” Emanuel Kant contended that “ every 
 action or phenomenon, so far as it produces 
 an event, is itself an event or occurrence, 
 which pre-supposes another state wherein 
 the cause is to be met with; and thus every- 
 thing that happens is but a continuation of 
 the series, and no beginning which occurs 
 of itself is possible; consequently, all the 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 1 16 
 
 actions of the natural causes, in the suc- 
 cession, are themselves again effects.” Our 
 own Emerson asserted the omnipotence and 
 omnipresence of law: “That the wilful and 
 the fantastic, the low and the lofty, are 
 encircled by a necessity.” Whatever limits 
 us, we call fate. If we are brute and bar- 
 barous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful 
 shape. If we rise to spiritual culture, the 
 antagonism takes a spiritual form. . . . 
 
 The limitations refine as the soul purifies, 
 but the ring of necessity is alwa3's perched 
 at the top. 
 
 None greater than these may be found 
 in the noble realm of speculative thought. 
 They are unequalled by few, if any. The 
 whole field of modern science, also, is in 
 accord with their deductions : Teaching 
 that nature is an inevitable sequence, and 
 that all phenomena, material and mental, 
 are linked together by an inevitable con- 
 nection. In the words of Herbert Spencer: 
 “ Various classes of facts unite to prove 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 II7 
 
 that the law of metamorphosis which holds 
 among the physical forces, holds equally 
 between them and the mental forces. Those 
 modes of the unknowable which we call 
 motion, light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., 
 are alike transferable into each other, and 
 into those modes of the unknowable which 
 we distinguish as sensation, emotion, and 
 thought; these in their turns being directly 
 or indirectly re-transferable into the original 
 shapes.” 
 
 Would you dethrone man, I am asked? 
 No; I surrender to the behests of philosophy 
 as fortified by the deductions of science. 
 Years ago it was argued by Comte that, in 
 social order, the higher must subordinate 
 itself to the lower. That the organic finds 
 itself controlled and limited by the inorganic 
 world, and man has to work out his destiny 
 in submission to all the necessities, physical, 
 chemical and vital, which are pre-supposed 
 in his existence. “The higher,” he con- 
 tinued, “ can overcome the lower only by 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 obedience; if it is to conquer, it must at 
 least ‘stoop to conquer.’” And as was once 
 stated by Doctor Conolly, “All the superi- 
 ority of man, all those faculties which elevate 
 and dignify him, this reasoning power, this 
 moral sense, these capacities of happiness, 
 these high aspiring hopes, are felt and en- 
 joyed and manifested by means of the 
 nervous system. Its injury weakens, its im- 
 perfections limit, its destruction ends them.” 
 
 But, it may be asked, is not this a denial 
 of “free-will?” Yes, as popularly under- 
 stood. A “ free-will,” in the metaphysical 
 sense, is impossible. The conception is 
 unknown to the best modern psychology. 
 The abstract will, of certain metaph}'- 
 sicians, is a phantasm. Individual voli- 
 tions, only, come within our actual ex- 
 perience. They have been generalized, by 
 mental philosophers, into a self-existent, 
 self-sustaining, and self-procreating entity. 
 However, an abstraction is not an essence. 
 Such men but tell us what a “free will” 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 IIQ 
 
 should be; that it exists has never been 
 demonstrated. Again, the phenomenon 
 “ will ” is now known to be transmitted from 
 generation to generation. Heredity teaches 
 that its energy and its weakness are con- 
 nected with certain states of the organism. 
 “We can no longer doubt the transmission 
 takes place by means of the organs, and, 
 in fact, that the ‘will’ is physiological.’’ 
 Moreover, in a philosophical sense, the idea 
 is “at war’’ with a uniform law of cause 
 and effect. Chance events are inconceiv- 
 able in a universe of causation. Freedom 
 of the will, therefore, is a delusion. For 
 ages men believed that the sun revolved 
 around the earth, because it seemed to do 
 so. A similar illusion is at the base of our 
 ethical system, since we enjoy only the ap- 
 pearance of liberty. “ Our apparent freedom 
 consists in the absence of all physical re- 
 straints, and in our power to do as we 
 please; but what we please to do depends 
 upon our mental constitution and the cir- 
 
120 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 cumstances in which we are placed.” The 
 idea was beautifully expressed by Emerson 
 in his poem ‘‘ Fate.” 
 
 ‘ ‘ Deep in the man sits fast his fate, 
 
 To mold his fortune, mean or great : 
 
 Unknown to Cromwell as to me 
 Was Cromwell’s measure or degree; 
 
 Unknown to him as to his horse. 
 
 If he than his groom be better or worse. 
 
 He works, plots, lights in rude affairs. 
 
 With Squires, Lords, Kings, his craft compares. 
 
 Till late he learned, through doubt and fear. 
 
 Broad England harbored not his peer. 
 
 Obeying time, the last to own 
 The genius from its cloudy throne. 
 
 For the prevision is allied 
 Unto the thing so signified ; 
 
 Or say, the foresight that awaits. 
 
 Is the same genius that creates.” 
 
 In human history, as in physical nature, 
 therefore, every event is linked to its ante- 
 cedent by an unavoidable connection, and 
 such precedent is connected with an anterior 
 effect; and thus the whole would form a 
 necessary chain, in which, indeed, each man 
 may play his part, but can by no means 
 determine what the part shall be. 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 I2I 
 
 The moral actions of men, said Buckle, 
 are the product of their antecedents. In 
 other words, when an action is performed, 
 it is performed in consequence of certain 
 motives; those motives are the results of 
 some antecedents; “ therefore, if we were 
 acquainted with the whole of the antecedents 
 and with all the laws of their movements 
 we could with certainty foretell the whole 
 of their immediate results. This great 
 social law is liable to disturbances which 
 trouble its operation, without affecting its 
 truth.” 
 
 Ergo, given any set of circumstances, 
 and nothing could have happened, save that 
 which did happen; and under exactly the 
 same conditions, the conduct of men must 
 ever issue in the same results. The past 
 should be dismissed without regrets. Our 
 position, at any time, should be judged as 
 it really is, and not for what we vainly 
 suppose it might have been; “for nothing 
 is more certain than that we could not have 
 
122 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 acted differently in any act of our lives, 
 with the state of mind and circumstances 
 then existing.” 
 
 Statistics, likewise, are daily making it 
 evident that the same fixed calculable laws 
 exist in the departments of life and mind 
 as in physics. ” In individual cases, or in 
 a limited circle, apparent uncertainty may 
 exist. Within a given number of cases, 
 however, and a large field, invariable results 
 may be looked for.” 
 
 In the 1 2th annual report of William 
 Farr, Esq., to the Registrar General of Eng- 
 land, we are told “it may be broadly stated 
 that 27 in 1000 men of the population of 
 the age of 20 and under 60, are suffering 
 from one kind of disease or another; that 
 several are of long duration, that others 
 are recurrent, and that some are heredi- 
 tary.” We are informed in a subsequent 
 report of the Registrar himself, that it seems 
 to be a “law” one person out of every 45, 
 living at the commencement of any year, 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 123 
 
 will die within that year. (The entire 
 system of insurance — life, fire, and marine — 
 is erected on the principle contended for 
 in this chapter. Not only do a certain 
 relative number of men die in each class 
 annually, but the law extends to the number 
 of policies lapsed each year. There seems 
 also to be a periodicity in the number of 
 fires and marine disasters.) 
 
 According to Porter and Buckle, even 
 “marriage is not determined by the temper 
 and wishes of the individual, but by large 
 general facts over which individuals can ex- 
 ercise no authority. It is now known that 
 marriages bear a fixed and definite relation 
 to the price of corn.” A century’s experi- 
 ence in England demonstrates that mar- 
 riages are regulated by the average earn- 
 ings of the great mass of people. Cheap- 
 ness of provision and not love regulates 
 the number of nuptials. Combe affirms 
 the same striking coincidence in the ratio 
 of births m Great Britain. 
 
124 
 
 'J'HE DESTINIES. 
 
 Another singular fact has been deduced 
 from the official reports of England and 
 France. “ Even forgetfulness is under a 
 constant law.” Buckle is an authority for 
 the statement that ” year after year, the 
 same proportion of letter-writers forget to 
 direct their letters, in some part; so that 
 for each successive period we can actually 
 foretell the number of persons whose memory 
 will fail them in regard to this trifling oc- 
 currence.” 
 
 By the same witness we prove “ the uni- 
 form reproduction of crime is more clearly 
 marked, and more capable of being pre- 
 dicted than are the physical laws connected 
 with the disease and destruction of our 
 bodies.” Before this. Combe had observed 
 a similar uniformity, under similar circum- 
 stances, of the recurrence of crimes. He 
 perceived in human conduct the same strik- 
 ing indications of constancy in results, as in 
 the prevalence of disease and the endur- 
 ance of life. Combe said, in 1854, in writ- 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 ing by way of comment on a certain report 
 to the House of Commons: “During the 
 five years, ending with the last year of an 
 execution, there were committed for the 
 crimes enumerated, 7276 persons, of whom 
 196 were executed. During the five years 
 immediately following the last execution, 
 there were committed for the same offense 
 7120. Does not this show that these crimes 
 arose from causes in themselves permanent, 
 and which punishment does not remove?” 
 Rawson also remarked that the greatest 
 variation which had taken place during 
 three years, in the proportion of any class 
 of criminals, at the same period of life, had 
 not exceeded a half per cent. 
 
 And Dr. Brown states (Vol. 8 of the 
 Assurance Magazine), that “in twenty years, 
 the number of persons accused of various 
 crimes in France, and registered under their 
 respective ages, scarcely varies at any age, 
 from year to year, comparing the propor- 
 tional per cent under each age with the 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 I 26 
 
 totals. M. Quatelet deduced from the sta- 
 tistical returns of government in the same 
 country, that for 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829 and 
 1830, in each year, there was one person 
 accused out of every 4463 inhabitants, and 
 61 condemned out of every 100 accused. 
 “ In everything which concerns crime,” ob- 
 served this greatest of statisticians, “ the 
 same numbers re-occur with a constancy 
 which cannot be mistaken, and that this is 
 the case, even with those crimes which seem 
 quite independent of human foresight, such, 
 for instance, as murders, which are gener- 
 ally committed after quarrels arising from 
 circumstances apparently casual. Neverthe- 
 less, we know from experience, that every 
 year there not only take place the same 
 number of murders, but even the instru- 
 ments by which they are committed, are 
 employed in the same proportion.” Murder, 
 then, ‘‘ occurs with as much regularity as 
 the movements of the tides and the rota- 
 tion of the seasons.” 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 127 
 
 “ Self-murder,” Buckle observes, “ seems 
 to be not only capricious and uncontrol- 
 able, but also very obscure in regard to 
 proof. Yet, in different countries, for 
 which we have returns, we find, year by 
 year, the same proportion of persons put- 
 ting an end to their own existence. In 
 London, for example, about 240 persons 
 make away with themselves every year; the 
 annual suicides oscillating, from the pressure 
 of temporary causes, between 266, the highest, 
 and 213, the lowest. In 1846, which was 
 the great year of excitement — caused by 
 the railroad panic — the suicides in London 
 were 266; in 1847 began a slight improve- 
 ment, and they fell to 256; in 1848 they 
 were 247; in 1849 they were 213; in 1850 
 they were 229. 
 
 In the “Journey through India,” Heber 
 mentions the vain attempt of the English 
 government to check the frequent suicides 
 by drowning, committed at Benares; and 
 August Comte has exposed the folly of 
 
128 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 thinking that suicide can be diminished by 
 the enactments of law-givers. 
 
 Of this field, Quatelet says, in conclusion: 
 “ The possibility of assigning, beforehand, 
 the number of accused and condemned 
 which should occur in a country, is calcu- 
 lated to lead to serious reflections, since 
 it involves the fate of several thousands of 
 human beings, who are impelled, as it were, 
 by an irresistible necessit}^ to the bar of 
 the tribunal, and towards the sentences of 
 condemnation that there await them. These 
 conclusions flow directly from the prin- 
 ciple, already so often stated in this work, 
 that effects are in proportion to their 
 causes, and that the effects remain the 
 same, if the causes which produced them 
 do not vary.” 
 
 Another step is needed to complete our 
 argument in this branch. Actions are the 
 production of motives. Motives are the 
 effects of determinate antecedents. Whence 
 these antecedents? They are to be found 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 129 
 
 in the “ Law of Heredity.” Reproduction 
 is governed by law, and ‘‘ like begets like.” 
 To quote from Voltaire: “The physical, 
 which is ‘ father of the moral,’ transmits 
 the same character from father to son for 
 ages. The Appii were ever proud and in- 
 flexible ; the Catos always austere. The 
 whole line of the Guises were bold, rash, 
 factious, full of the most insolent pride and 
 most winning politeness. From Francis de 
 Guise down to that one who put himself 
 at the head of the people of Naples, they 
 were all in look, courage and character 
 above ordinary men. I have seen full length 
 portraits of Francis, of Balafre and his son: 
 they were all six feet high, and they all 
 possess the same features — the same auda- 
 city on the brow, in the eyes, and in the 
 attitude.” M. Taine sees in Lord Byron 
 a true descendant of the Berserkers. To 
 Ribot, the French of the 19th century are 
 the Gauls described by Caesar and Strabo. 
 Amphere writes of the character of the 
 
130 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 Greeks, that it has not changed; “ lie has 
 now the same qualities, the same defects 
 as of old.” The physiology and mentality 
 of parents characterize their offspring. The 
 human mind is not a blank at birth. Its 
 capabilities and character are inherited. 
 Every possibility of the soul is innate and 
 constitutional from the moment of gestation. 
 Such is the verdict of science substantiated 
 by Ribot, Galton, and Fowler. 
 
 That the peculiar anatomy and physi- 
 ognomy of races is persistent and hereditary, 
 must be admitted. The truth is verified 
 by every-day experience. We see it in the 
 Englishman, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, 
 and Scandinavian. The intellectual char- 
 acteristics of a people are likewise trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation. 
 The Indian, for example, is ever wild, 
 free, cunning and revengeful. Negroes, 
 on the other hand, are generally timid, 
 garrulous, urbane and polite. The He- 
 brews, again, are noteworthy for intellectual 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 I3I 
 
 calibre, the acquisitive faculty, and a clan- 
 nish spirit. 
 
 In the family, likewise, likenesses and 
 stature pass from generation to generation. 
 So, also, of size. Fowler found this exempli- 
 fied everywhere. Some of his illustrations 
 were taken from the Websters, Franklins, 
 and Folgers. Muscular strength is heredi- 
 tary, as with the Douglas, Fessenden, and 
 Garrish families. Physical deformities and 
 excrescences obey this edict of nature; and 
 it includes disease, insanity, gray hair, pre- 
 mature death, propensities, length of life 
 and beauty. The truth is overwhelming 
 that mental faculties and qualities descend 
 from child to child. These sequences in 
 mental phenomena operate through gener- 
 ations upon caution, self-esteem, firmness, 
 pride, benevolence, and religious feeling. 
 Talent and ability go by descent. Even 
 genius, although akin to divine, is transmis- 
 sible. “ Each generation,” said Galton, 
 “ has enormous power over the natural gifts 
 
132 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 of those that follow. . . . The results of 
 
 an examination into the kindred of about 
 400 illustrious men of all periods of history 
 were such, in my own opinion, as com- 
 pletely to establish the theory that genius 
 was hereditary.” 
 
 Now for my application. Gambling, in 
 some form, is a propensity of the general 
 mind: an inclination now hereditary in the 
 race. That such must be the case is clear 
 from Ribot, Maudsley and Da Gama Ma- 
 chado. ” The dead rule over the living,” 
 writes Spencer. “ Past generations exercise 
 power over present generations, by trans- 
 mitting their nature, bodily and mental.” 
 
 The origin and development of gambling 
 were obvious to the eminent astronomer, 
 Richard A. Proctor. ‘‘ Beyond doubt,” he 
 said, “the element of chance which enters 
 into all lives, has had a most potent influ- 
 ence in moulding the characters of men. If 
 we consider the multitudinous fancies and 
 superstitions of men like sailors, farmers. 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 133 
 
 and hunters, whose lives depend more on 
 chance than those of men in some other 
 employments, and recognize this as the 
 natural effect of the influence which chance 
 has on their fortunes, we need not consider 
 it strange if the influence of chance, in 
 moulding the minds and characters of our 
 ancestors during countless generations, should 
 have produced a very marked effect on 
 human nature. An immense number of 
 those from whom I inherit descent must, 
 in the old savage days, have depended 
 almost wholly upon chance for the very 
 means of subsistence. When, wild in wood, 
 the savage ran, he ran on speculation. He 
 might, or he might not, be lucky enough 
 to earn his living on any day, by a successful 
 chase, or by finding such fruits of the earth 
 as would supply him with a satisfactory 
 amount of food. He might have much de- 
 pending on chances which he could not 
 avoid risking, as the gambler of ta-day has 
 when he ‘sees red’ and stakes his whole 
 
134 
 
 THE DESTINIES. 
 
 fortune on a throw of the dice or a turn 
 of the cards. We cannot be doubtful about 
 the effects of such chance influences even 
 on the individual character. Repeated, 
 generation after generation, they must have 
 tended to fill men with a gambling spirit^ 
 only to be corrected by innumerable gener- 
 ations of steady labor; and, unfortunately, 
 even in the steadiest work, the element of 
 chance enters largely enough to render the 
 corrective influence of such work on the 
 character of the race much slower than it 
 might otherwise be. Every man who has 
 to work for his living at all, every man 
 who has to depend in any way, on business 
 for wealth, has to trust to chance, in many 
 respects. So that all men, in some degree, 
 more or less, have their characters modified 
 by this peculiarity of their environment. 
 The inherited tendency of each one of us 
 towards gambling, in some one or other of 
 its multitudinous forms, is undoubtedly 
 strengthened in this way.” 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 135 
 
 First, we see, it cannot be said that 
 gambling is immoral, sinful, or irreligious. 
 Second, it is clear the propensity to gamble 
 is as natural as the temperament or com- 
 plexion. The law can no more destroy the 
 natural inclination of the mind, than it can 
 make “one hair white or black.” If an evil 
 (which in the absolute sense I deny), it is 
 not to be prevented by legislation. It is 
 no more possible, by direct effort, to change 
 the gaming proclivity in man than to stem 
 the torrent, or check the eternal progress 
 of the glacier. The growth of centuries, 
 down it moves through the years in an 
 irresistible march. Absurd seem all our 
 demonstrations; how idle, the beating of the 
 air. When one form passes away another 
 immediately takes its place. Disappearing 
 here, it appears there. Apparently sup- 
 pressed in one place it breaks out with more 
 vigor in another. Continue it will, and con- 
 tinue it must, whether practiced openly or 
 in secret. If it is not the faro-bank or 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 lottery it is something worse. If not the 
 gambling-rooms of a Morrissey, a Daly, a 
 Pendleton or a Hankins, it will be the mam- 
 moth palaces (boards of trade and chambers 
 of commerce, so-called) , which now are a 
 feature of every city in Christendom, and 
 wherein millions upon millions are wagered 
 annually upon the very bread and meat 
 ' wherewith our life is sustained; wherein 
 billions are lost and won, sometimes to the 
 injury of every department of actual pro- 
 duction. There are the open boards of 
 trade, too, wherein the petty transactions 
 aggregate many millions. I am told by 
 those who have made it a study for years, 
 that more than 8o per cent of the trans- 
 actions on the exchange are fictitious: mere 
 betting on the rise and fall of commodities 
 in price. All authority in this matter is 
 practically powerless. Inclinations will be 
 satisfied, and until inclinations change, the 
 demand will be supplied; this, moreover, in 
 the face of laws however stringent, or police 
 
Till-: DESTINIES. 
 
 137 
 
 supervision however effective. Such methods 
 are not only ineffective, but absolutely in- 
 jurious to society. No nation or govern- 
 ment has succeeded in restricting, limiting, 
 or curing the gambling spirit and practice. 
 That this is true, I call upon every candid 
 and fair-minded man of experience to bear 
 witness. I appeal to lawyers, judges, states- 
 men, scientists, philosophers, and the police 
 and municipal authorities throughout the 
 United States and Europe to corroborate 
 my statement. The sooner this is generally 
 realized, the better for humanity. What I 
 have to suggest, instead of the present 
 policy, is reserved for consideration in an- 
 other place. I may say here, however, that 
 for the law to punish what it cannot thereby 
 cure is absurd — absurd as is every attempt 
 to accomplish the impossible. Systematic 
 education is the only hope; incessant train- 
 ing the only remedy for appetites and pro- 
 pensities; either for their correction, restraint, 
 or subversion. If it had been revealed to 
 
THE DESTINIES. 
 
 138 
 
 man that gambling is a sin, even that would 
 not vitiate our reasoning in this chapter. 
 God, or absolute wisdom, should be able 
 to reconcile the existence of an evil with 
 His own Sovereignty. However, this chapter 
 is not concerned with the realities of re- 
 ligion, or the true principles of philosophy. 
 As human conceptions, they have been noted 
 as in accord with the teachings of science; 
 to show that the human intellect responds 
 intuitively to what are subsequently known 
 as the laws of nature. 
 
legislative lEyoccism; 
 
 or, 
 
 Ube Belief in Morbsflf)agic. 
 
 (139) 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Xegislative Bjorcisin; or, TLbc ifiSeUef 
 tn MorD=/IDacjlc. 
 
 F or ages, mankind were believers in 
 magic. One of the phases was Ex- 
 orcism, or a pretended exercise of super- 
 natural power, through certain words of 
 magic import. “ Healing words,” says Van 
 Helmont, “ were used against the devil and 
 all diseases.” And it is asserted by the 
 Zendavesta that “ many cures are performed 
 by words.” That the magic power of words 
 was a belief of the Greeks and Romans, is 
 evident from their literature. Thus it is 
 said of Plotin, that while in Sicily he cured 
 Porphyrius of a fever, “by wonder-working 
 words.” We are told how Orpheus’ song 
 
 ( 141 ) 
 
142 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 calmed the storm, and how Ulysses “ stopped 
 the bleeding of wounds by the use of certain 
 words.” They also tell us, that with words, 
 Cato cured sprains; Marcus Varrus removed 
 tumors; and Servilius Novianno restored 
 sight to the eyes. It is gravely stated by 
 Pliny that Cato did not alone use the words, 
 ” motas, daries, dardaries, astaries,” but like- 
 wise a green branch, four or five feet long, 
 which he split in two, and caused to be held 
 over the injured limb. A similar power was 
 ascribed to the philosopher, Pythagoras. 
 And if “ye olden chronicle ” is to be credited, 
 the curses of Peter of Amiens and Bernard 
 of Clairvaux, “produced fearful spasms and 
 sufferings, whilst their blessings restored 
 speech to the dumb and health to the sick.” 
 
 The belief in magic is not general in our 
 age of the world. It has gradually retired 
 before the march of reason and the light of 
 scientific truth. That all nature, organic and 
 inorganic, animate and inanimate, is subject 
 to a universal law of cause and effect, is now 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 143 
 
 a truism to every educated person. Science 
 has forever destroyed the curative influence 
 of phrases. Reason sternly excludes verbal 
 formulae, from the realm of physical causation. 
 That any mere words may be used against 
 disease or injury is now denied by enlight- 
 ened opinion the world over. In medicine, 
 therefore, Exorcism is a thing of the past. 
 
 One aspect of the superstition still re- 
 mains, as an obstacle to the progress of 
 humanity; the possibility of legislating mo- 
 rality into men. Law-givers still cling to 
 the power of “exorcism” by statute. Their 
 blind creed is: “beatification and education 
 by law.” “ To them, laws are the cows, whose 
 teats mankind should suck. To them, men 
 are as dough, which their wisdom would 
 knead.” This adoration of the law and 
 legislators was systematically inculcated by 
 the i8th century publicists: Montesquieu, 
 Robespierre, Rousseau, and St. Just. They 
 seem to teach that “ the law cannot come out 
 of us, but must be poured into us.” But, as 
 
144 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 Erlanger has said with truth, he who under- 
 takes to give institutions to a people must 
 feel within himself the capacity to change 
 human nature, to metamorphose every man, 
 to transmute the constitution of each indi- 
 vidual, to strengthen them; in one word, 
 “ he must take from mankind their own 
 powers, and impart to them a foreign 
 power.” 
 
 Statesmen should recognize with Car- 
 penter, that “ society is the gigantic growth 
 of centuries, moving on in a resistless and 
 orderly march, with the precision and fatality 
 of an astronomic orb.” The huge being 
 marches on with elephantine tread. The 
 liberal sits on its front and the conservative 
 on its rear; but both are swept along, whether 
 they will or not, and both are shaken off ere 
 long, inevitably, into the dust. One reformer 
 shouts “ this way,” and another cries “ that,” 
 but down comes the great foot and crushes 
 both, indifferently; the man who thought he 
 was right, and the man who found he was 
 
le'gislative exorcism. 
 
 145 
 
 wrong; crushing, alike, him who would facili- 
 tate, and him who would impede its progress. 
 At least, it should be kept in mind, “that 
 laws are made by the people, and not the 
 people by the laws.” Modern society is so 
 burdened by an enormous and complex over- 
 growth of law, that the necessity for its ex- 
 istence is now a prevailing notion, to the 
 end that men may be kept in order: that, 
 without the oppressive institution, people 
 would not follow a systematic life. On the 
 other hand, all observation of civilized races 
 discovers the directly opposite. The instinct 
 of man is to regularity of life, and law is 
 but a result or expression of this. “ As well 
 attribute the organization of a crab to the 
 influence of its shell, as ascribe the orderly 
 life of a nation to the action of its laws.” 
 The law may have a purpose, but to believe 
 it will preserve order is illusive. This it 
 certainly does not effect, even with all its 
 machinery of police, courts and prisons. 
 Fichte said: “The object of all government 
 
146 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 is to render government superfluous.” The 
 same idea has been expressed by Whitman 
 and Paine. Moreover, “ if external authority, 
 of any kind, has a final purpose, it must 
 be to establish and consolidate an internal 
 authority. When this process is complete, 
 government, in the ordinary sense, is already 
 rendered superfluous.” 
 
 The world has been slow (or loath) to 
 learn the only proper functions of govern- 
 ment. This must be clear to every reader 
 of Bruce Smith, Lieber and Dick. In the 
 governments of oriental antiquity, political 
 authority was clothed with a super-eminent 
 and absolute jurisdiction over the whole 
 life of its subjects; ‘‘the manners of their 
 subjects, their rank, their condition, mode 
 of life, and daily occupations, were all fixed 
 by the law.” 
 
 And, in the opinion of Grecian philoso- 
 phers, the state was everything, the individual 
 nothing. In their judgment, the government 
 should not permit any individual to waste 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 147 
 
 his power and energy, nor should he be 
 allowed to misdirect it. They insisted the 
 law must first devise the model of a perfect 
 citizen ; and then, by a system of discipline, 
 mould, or rather distort, into agreement 
 therewith, the character of every citizen. 
 The powers of state, therefore, should em- 
 brace individual life in its entirety; from 
 infancy to mature age, “in all conditions 
 and relations, whether domestic, religious, 
 social, industrial or political.” 
 
 Such teachings had their illustration in 
 the administration of Greek governments. 
 In Sparta, for example, under the reign of 
 Lycurgus, the citizen belonged to the state, 
 rather than to the family. The individual 
 Athenian did not have a right the Archons 
 were “bound to respect.” Draco punished 
 even laziness with death, and Solon pro- 
 hibited costly sacrifices at funerals. In 
 Greece, Lycurgus seems to have been the 
 first legislator against luxury. He enacted, 
 for example, that no Spartan should own a 
 
148 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 house, or household article, which had been 
 made with a finer implement than an axe or 
 a saw; and that no cook should use any 
 other spice than salt and vinegar. Our 
 authorities are Ephorus and Diogenes La- 
 ertius. The sumptuary prohibitions of Solon, 
 according to Plutarch, were aimed at the 
 female passion for dress, as well as the pomp 
 of funerals. He likewise placed surveillance 
 over the luxury of banquets. 
 
 The Dorian races were disposed to 
 austere and rigid habits of life. A La- 
 conian could not lawfully attend a drink- 
 ing entertainment. In Lacedtcmonia, fru- 
 gality and simplicity were the object of the 
 pheiditia. Gold and silver were interdicted, 
 and their legislation permitted the use of 
 iron money alone. In Magna Graecia, the 
 Pythagoreans encouraged the sumptuary 
 policy. Zaleucus, the Locrian legislator, en- 
 acted that no woman should appear in public 
 wearing gold ornaments, or embroidered 
 apparel, unless her designs were unchaste. 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 149 
 
 Roman statesmen were not wiser, in their 
 day, than those of Greece. From the time 
 of the Kings, they sought by law to regulate 
 luxurious tendencies. We find it in the law 
 of the Twelve Tables: “ Do not carve the 
 wood which is to serve for a funeral pile. 
 Have no weeping women to tear their 
 cheeks; no gold, no coronets.” Certain 
 foreign articles of luxury were prohibited 
 about i8q b. c. An important part of the 
 legislation of Sulla, Csesar, Crassus, Antony, 
 Augustus and Tiberius, related to the ex- 
 penditures for food, funerals and games of 
 chance. Says Plutarch : ” The Romans 
 
 thought the liberty ought not to be left to 
 each private citizen to marry at will, to 
 choose his manner of life, to make feasts; 
 in short, to follow his desires and his tastes, 
 without being subject to the judgment and 
 supervision of anyone.” The Oppian Law 
 forbade matrons to have more than a half- 
 ounce of gold, to wear garments of diversi- 
 fied color, or to use carriages in Rome. 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 150 
 
 Following a revolt of the Women, in 195 
 B. c., this law was abrogated. Inspired by 
 Cato, the Censor, fourteen years later, the 
 Orchian Law was promulgated. It limited 
 the table expenses, as did the Fannian Law 
 twenty years after. The Lex Orchia limited 
 the number of guests to be present at a 
 feast. The general cost of entertainment 
 was fixed by the Lex Fannia. A limit of 
 one hundred asses was established for some 
 festivals, and thirty asses for others. Ordin- 
 ary entertainments were restricted to ten 
 asses. The Didian Law extended to all 
 Italy. 
 
 In Greece, sumptuary laws were seldom 
 or never regarded b}^ the people, who always 
 entered into a tacit and general conspiracy 
 against their enforcement. Notwithstanding 
 the Roman notatio censoria, luxury continued 
 to increase with the growth of wealth. No 
 law of senate or emperor could restrain the 
 tendency. “ From first to last,” writes the 
 historian, “all were habitually transgressed.” 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 15! 
 
 In the time of Tertullian they appear to 
 be of the past. 
 
 Instances of like legislation disfigure the 
 statue-books of every civilized country down- 
 ward from the fifth century, a. d. All sumptu- 
 ary laws, at Rome, were formally repealed 
 by the later emperors; but the folly there- 
 after re-appeared when European society 
 began to rally and segregate under Charle- 
 magne. To illustrate, “in the latter middle 
 ages, knights were allowed to wear gold, 
 and esquires only silver; the former damask, 
 the latter satin of taffeta; when the esquires 
 used damask, velvet was reserved for the 
 knights.” The first legislation of this char- 
 acter, in the modern world, was enacted by 
 Frederick II., in Italy; James I., in Aragon; 
 Philip IV., in France; Edward II. and Ed- 
 ward III., in England. Commencing in 
 France with Charlemagne, it first became 
 extensive and flourished under Philip IV. and 
 Charles VI. From Edward III. until the 
 Reformation, it was in great favor in 
 
152 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 England. Great was the absurdity to which 
 legislators were carried by this vain policy. 
 In Scotland, for example, one parliament 
 forbade ladies to attend church with the 
 face muffled in a veil, and another fulmin- 
 ated against superfluous banqueting and the 
 inordinate use of foreign spices; while a 
 Danish law provided that no servant girl 
 should wear her hair curled. The edicts of 
 Philip IV. related to extravagance at table 
 and in dress. An edict of Charles for- 
 bade the use of long-pointed shoes. Charles 
 VI. allowed no one to exceed a soup and 
 two dishes at dinner. Later French kings 
 sought to restrict the use of gold, silver, 
 silks, embroidery, and fine linen. P'rom 
 Blanqui we take a sample ordinance of the 
 character under consideration. “The said 
 Lord the King, being duly informed that 
 the great superfluity of meat at weddings, 
 feasts and banquets, brings about the high 
 price of fowls and game, wills and decrees 
 that the ordinance on this subject be renewed 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 153 
 
 and kept; and for the continuance of the 
 same, that those who make such feasts, as 
 well as the stewards who prepare and con- 
 duct them, and the cooks who serve them, 
 be punished with the penalties hereunto 
 affixed. That every sort of fowl and game 
 brought to the markets shall be seen and 
 visited by the poulterer-wardens, in the pres- 
 ence of the officers of the police and bour- 
 geois clerks to the aforesaid, who shall be 
 present at the said markets, and shall cause 
 a report to be made to the police, by the 
 said wardens. The public shall be likewise 
 bound to live according to the ordinance of 
 the King, without exceeding the limit, under 
 penalty of such pecuniary fines as are herein 
 set forth against the inn-keeper, so that 
 neither by private understanding nor common 
 consent shall the ordinance be violated.” 
 During the same year, another ordinance 
 provided “ that no bourgeois woman shall 
 have a chariot; no bourgeois man or woman 
 shall wear green, or grey, or ermine, and 
 
154 
 
 legislativf: exorcism. 
 
 they shall dispose of those they have, by a 
 year from Easter next. The dukes, counts 
 and barons of 6000 livres, in land, or more, 
 may have four robes a year, and no more, 
 and the women as many. A knight who 
 has 3000 livres, in land, may have three robes 
 a year and no more; and one of these three 
 robes shall be for summer. At the principal 
 meals of the day no one shall have but two 
 viands and a pork soup, and let him not de- 
 ceive about it. It is ordained that no prelate 
 or baron shall have a robe for body of more 
 than 25 Tournish sous, a Paris ell.” In 
 1294 it was decreed “that every manner 
 of people, who have not an income of 6000 
 Tournish livres, shall not use, and will not 
 be able to use, any gold or silver plate for 
 drinking, for eating, or for other use, and 
 that no person, under penalty of fine and 
 imprisonment, shall practice any fraud about 
 
 •.I. »» 
 
 It. 
 
 In France, laws of this character disap- 
 peared near the end of the i6th centur}-. 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 155 
 
 Under Louis XV., all such laws were practi- 
 cally a dead letter. “ These ordinances are 
 the history of but yesterday,” says an able 
 and profound student of French legislation; 
 “ but ideas and sentiments have gone far 
 in advance of facts. We have difficulty in 
 comprehending the interference of govern- 
 ment in the domestic affairs of families, and 
 in contracts which concern only private indi- 
 viduals. Opinion has undergone an entire 
 revolution. Sumptuary laws can no longer 
 be proposed. We need not think the change 
 is due to our wisdom, to our pretended superi- 
 ority to the ancients; let us simply recognize 
 that the essential principle of society has 
 changed; the world moves on another basis. 
 
 . . In no century were these laws ob- 
 
 served to any great extent. Enactments of 
 this kind were never effectual in France. 
 Since the Revolution, no sumptuary laws 
 have been enacted, and yet the luxury of 
 attire which formerly distinguished the no- 
 bility has disappeared. A duke dresses like 
 
156 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 anybody else, and he would be ridiculed if 
 he sought to distinguish himself by a manner 
 of dress different from others.” 
 
 It has been observed by one of the 
 great statesmen of England, that the broad 
 principles of freedom had been early recog- 
 nized in that country, and understood by 
 even the citizens of minimum intelligence; 
 for instance, freedom of locomotion, freedom 
 in the disposition of property, freedom of 
 opinion in politics and religion. But that 
 other important features of the same prin- 
 ciple were not so quickly and clearly under- 
 stood. “I refer,” he continues, ‘‘to such 
 matters as freedom of commercial intercourse 
 and exchange, freedom of contract in the 
 natural rise and fall of wages and in the 
 condition of labor; freedom of individual 
 taste and expenditure, in the more private 
 concerns of life. In many cases, these were 
 matters which affected the poor and rich 
 alike, but principally the poor, who, in their 
 meagre parliamentary representation, en- 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 157 
 
 joyed few opportunities for effectual protest. 
 One can only account for the continuance 
 of those which materially affected the better 
 classes, who did enjoy representation, to 
 the fact that, not being familiar with the 
 fundamental economic laws, which are now 
 so widely understood, they were not prompted 
 to any practical resistance. It is highly 
 probable, too, that for want of this know- 
 ledge, most people rested satisfied with the 
 vague idea that, in some way or other, 
 though not very clear, such restrictive legis- 
 lation produced some good to somebody.” 
 We pass over those legislative and executive 
 interferences, which present “ every possible 
 contrivance for hampering the energies of 
 commerce.” Purely economic questions are 
 not germane to our discussion; such as the 
 numerous and ingenious restraints upon 
 foreign trade; the attempts to regulate the 
 rate of wages and the price of food. 
 
 Richard II., Henry IV., and Edward IV. 
 legislated against the liveried suits of the 
 
I 58 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 nobility. This was also prohibited by Henry 
 VII.; and yet, even under James I., says 
 Hume, “ we find ambassadors accompanied 
 by a suite of 500 or 300 noblemen.” During 
 the reign of Edward HI. it was enacted that 
 no man should be allowed more than two 
 courses at dinner or supper, or more than 
 two kinds of food in each course. Three 
 courses were permitted on the festival days 
 of the year. Foreign cloth was allowed to 
 the royal family alone. Unless a man pos- 
 sessed at least ;^ioo per annum he was for- 
 bidden furs, skins and silks. During the 
 same reign, another act divided the people 
 of England into classes, and prescribed the 
 apparel of each. In the social scale it did 
 not go higher than knights, and minutel}' 
 regulated the clothing of women and chil- 
 dren. It was repealed the following year. 
 In 1363 it was enacted that servants should 
 have only one meal a day of flesh or fish. 
 The statute of 1444 attempted to regulate 
 the price of clothing for each year:, a bailiff. 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 159 
 
 50T.; principal servant, 40T.: ordinary servant, 
 33T. \d. James I., of Scotland, forbade not 
 only “ sumptuous clothing,” but the use of 
 pies and baked meats, to all under the rank 
 of baron. The Scottish sumptuary law of 
 1612 was the last in Great Britain. The 
 English laws were largely repealed during 
 the reign of James I. A few remained on the 
 statute book as late as 1856. Mr. Froude has 
 exposed the folly of their existence. 
 
 It has been said of the English laws they 
 “were at all times inspired by a desire to 
 arrest an irresistible movement, resulting 
 from the very force of things — from the 
 logical development of human activity. 
 They were, moreover, powerless, and always 
 evaded by a sort of tacit and general con- 
 spiracy of all the citizens, without anyone 
 being able to find fault with the principle, 
 without anyone thinking of contesting the 
 power of the legislator on this point.” 
 
 Roscher remarks: “In Ireland the gov- 
 ernment had endeavored for a long time to 
 
i6o 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 preserve that country from the ravages of 
 alcohol, by the imposition of the highest 
 taxes, and the severest penalties for smug- 
 gling. Every workman in an illegal distillery 
 was transported for seven years, and every 
 town in which such a one was found w'as 
 subject to a heavy fine. All in vain. Only 
 numberless acts of violence were now added 
 to beastly drunkenness.” 
 
 In another place, Roscher continues thus; 
 “ Where it has been attempted to suppress 
 the consumption of popular delicacies, the 
 impossibility of enforcing sumptuary laws 
 has been most strikingly observed. Thus, 
 in the i6th century, an effort was made as 
 regards brandy; in the 17th, as regards to- 
 bacco; in the i8th, as regards coffee. The 
 Hessian law of 1530 provided that only 
 apothecaries should retail brandy. In ibcg 
 Papal excommunication was fulminated 
 against all who took snuff in church, and 
 was repeated in i6qo. According to a 
 Turkish law of 1610, all smokers should have 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. l6l 
 
 their pipes broken against the nose. In 1634 
 a Russian law prohibited smoking under 
 penalty of death. In Switzerland, even in 
 the 17th century, no one could smoke except 
 in secret. In its native place even coffee 
 had a hard struggle. Prohibited in Turkey 
 in 1633 under pain of death; it was still 
 prohibited in Basel in 1769, and could be 
 sold by apothecaries only as medicine. In 
 Hanover the coffee trade was prohibited in 
 1780. When governments discovered the 
 fruitlessness of these efforts, they gave up 
 the prohibition of these luxuries, and instead 
 substituted taxes on them, thus aiming to 
 combine a moral and a fiscal end. Even 
 Cato took this course. His office of censor, 
 which united the highest moral superinten- 
 dence with the highest financial guidance, 
 must of itself have led him in this direction. 
 
 Strange it is how slowly men learn by 
 experience. We know of the many oppres- 
 sions in England “ for opinion’s sake.” 
 History tells us that the puritan fathers 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 162 
 
 sought “freedom of conscience” in the wilds 
 of America. Yet, scarcely were the “pil- 
 grims” of New England wonted to a strange 
 and inhospitable land, than what they re- 
 quired for themselves was denied to others. 
 In their fanaticism, the “soul liberty” of 
 Roger Williams was violated in every con- 
 ceivable way. Personal freedom was vio- 
 lated to an extent that is now the detestation 
 of right-thinking persons. Execrable for 
 their tyrannical spirit, are some of the records 
 of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven 
 Colony and Connecticut. The following 
 extracts are taken from the records of the 
 General Court of the Colony of Massachu- 
 setts Bay: 
 
 “ 1635: Whereas, complaints hath bene 
 made to this Courte that dyvers persons, 
 within this jurisdiction, doe usually absent 
 themselves from Church meetings upon the 
 Lord’s Day, power is therefore given to any 
 two assistants to heare and sensure, either 
 by fine or imprisonment, all misdemeanors 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 163 
 
 of that kind, committed by any inhabitant 
 within this jurisdiction, provided they ex- 
 ceede not the fine of 15 shillings for any 
 one offense.” 
 
 “ 1669: Any person or persons that shade 
 be found smoking tobacco on the Lord’s 
 Day, going to or coming from the meetings, 
 within two miles of the meeting house, shall 
 pay 12 pence for every such default to the 
 colonies’ use.” 
 
 “ 1692: All and every justices of the peace, 
 constables and tything men are required to 
 restrain all persons from swimming in the 
 water; unnecessary and unreasonable walk- 
 ing in the streets or fields in the toun of 
 Boston, or other places; in the evening pre- 
 ceding the Lord’s Day, or any other part 
 of the said day or the evening following.” 
 
 ‘‘ 1634; The court, taking into consider- 
 ation the greate, superfluous and unneces- 
 sary expenses occassioned by some newe 
 and immodest fashions, as also the ordinary 
 wearing of golde, silver, silke, laces, girdles. 
 
164 
 
 LEGISLATI\E EXORCISM. 
 
 hat-bands, etc., hath, therefore, ordered that 
 noe person, either man or woman, shall here- 
 after make or buy any apparell, either woolen, 
 silke or lynen, with any lace on it, silver, 
 golde, silke or thread, under the penalty of 
 the forfeiture of such clothes.” 
 
 “ 1782; Be it enacted that each person, 
 being able of body and mind, not otherwise 
 necessarily prevented, who shall, for the 
 space of one month together, absent himself 
 or herself from the public worship of God, 
 on the Lord’s Day, shall forfeit and pay 
 the sum of ten shillings.” 
 
 In old Connecticut we find legislation 
 similar in character. In 1647: ‘‘Forasmuch, 
 as it is observed that many abuses are crept 
 in and committed by the frequent taking of 
 tobacco, it is ordered by the authorit}’ of 
 this Court, that no person under the age of 
 20 years, nor any other that hath not accus- 
 tomed himself to the use thereof, shall take 
 any tobacco until he hath brought a certifi- 
 cate under the hands of some who are ap- 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM, 
 
 165 
 
 proved for knowledge and skill in physic, 
 that it is useful to him and that he hath 
 received a license from the Court for the 
 same.” 
 
 “1643: Whoever shall prophane the Lord’s 
 Day, or any part of it, by unlawful sport, 
 recreation or otherwise, whether wilfully or 
 in careless neglect, shall be duly punished by 
 fine, imprisonment, or corporally, according 
 to the nature and measure of the sin and 
 offense,” 
 
 Here are some of the celebrated New 
 Haven “ Blue Laws:” 
 
 “ Whoever wears clothes trimmed with 
 golde, silver or bone lace, above two shillings 
 by the yard, shall be presented to the Grand 
 Jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the 
 offender at ^^300 estate.” 
 
 “ No one shall read Common Prayer, keep 
 Xmas or Saint’s Days, make minced pies, 
 dance, play cards, or play on any instrument 
 of music, except the drum, trumpet and 
 jew’s-harp.” 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 1 66 
 
 “ Ko one shall run on the Sabbath Day, 
 or walk in the Garden or elsewhere, except 
 reverently to and from meeting.” 
 
 ‘‘No one shall travel, cook victuals, make 
 beds, sweep house, cut hair or shave, on the 
 Sabbath Day.” 
 
 ‘‘ No woman shall kiss her child on the 
 Sabbath or fasting day.” 
 
 ” If any man shall kiss his wife, or any 
 wife her husband, on the Lord’s Day, the 
 party in fault shall be punished at the dis- 
 cretion of the Court of Magistrates. ” 
 
 ‘‘ Every man and woman duly, twice a 
 day, upon the first tolling of the bell, repair 
 into the church to heare divine service upon 
 pain of losing his or her day’s allowance, 
 for the first omission; for the second to be 
 whipped, and for the third to be condemned 
 to the galleys for six months.” 
 
 ‘‘ If any man, after legall conviction, shall 
 have or worship any other god but the Lord 
 God, hee shall bee put to death.” 
 
 ‘‘ If any person turns Quaker, he shall 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 67 
 
 be banished and not suffered to return, upon 
 the pains of death.” 
 
 “■ No priest shall abide in this dominion, 
 he shall be banished and suffer death on 
 his return.” 
 
 “ No man shall hold any office who is 
 not sound in the faith.” 
 
 “ No food or lodging shall be afforded 
 to a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic.” 
 
 ‘‘ Every man shall have his hair cut round 
 according to a cap.” 
 
 Such are a few of the laws that disgrace 
 the beginning of our national life. Repealed 
 they never were, save by the scorn of time, 
 or the revolt of the human heart, as it 
 struggled into a wider and brighter existence. 
 They were only effective as the expression 
 of a spirit then prevalent. Forward marched 
 the soul, and behind is left the hideous husk. 
 Here and there, on the statute books of 
 certain states, vestiges may remain of Sabba- 
 tarian legislation, but they are a dead letter, to 
 enforce which is seldom or never attempted. 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 1 68 
 
 Roscher observes, “That the puritanical 
 laws, which some of the states have passed 
 prohibiting all sales of spirituous liquors, 
 except for ecclesiastical, medical or chemical 
 purposes, have been found impossible of 
 enforcement.” Said Dr. Dio Lewis on this 
 subject: “A very striking illustration of the 
 weakness of law, when it comes in contact 
 with the instinct of liberty, is the result of 
 prohibition in Maine. I have taken pains 
 to learn the facts in that state. I traveled 
 it throughout and conversed with a large 
 number of its leading citizens, almost ex- 
 clusively temperance men, and became satis- 
 fied (notwithstanding the prohibitory law), 
 that intemperance is the great overwhelming 
 curse of the Pine Tree State.” The Doctor 
 then found fully 300 grog shops in Bangor. 
 He says of Portland, also, the number of 
 arrests for drunkenness in 1874 was 2011. 
 He is authority for the statement that, 
 in 1873, state prison inspectors of 
 
 Maine reported the enormous number of 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 i6g 
 
 17,808 arrests for drunkenness during that 
 year. 
 
 Hon. Jam’es McGinnis, of the St. Louis 
 bar, several years ago, gave the prohibitory 
 legislation of the whole country (and its 
 practical workings) an exhaustive consider- 
 ation in all aspects. The results of his study, 
 published to the world, revealed the same 
 condition of affairs in Maine, New Hamp- 
 shire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
 Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Mary- 
 land, Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, and 
 Kansas. On every hand, past and present, 
 he “ beheld the impracticability of prohibi- 
 tion.” “ I now appeal,” he says, ” to the 
 fair-minded reader to give his thoughtful 
 attention to the facts and figures which I 
 have truly and fairly presented, to show that 
 neither crime, pauperism, intemperance, nor 
 any of the ills which are popularly supposed 
 to grow out of intemperance, have been at 
 all lessened by prohibition.” 
 
 The political economists are practically 
 
170 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 unanimous in their reprobation of these laws. 
 Adam Smith vigorously protests against their 
 impertinence and presumption.- Of sumptu- 
 ary laws it has been said their enforcement 
 is exceedingly difficult, as it is always harder 
 to superintend consumption than production. 
 “The latter is conducted in definite localities. 
 The former is carried on in the secrecy of 
 a thousand homes. Besides, such laws have 
 very often the effect to make forbidden fruit 
 all the sweeter.’’ Spite of the penalties at- 
 tached to their violation, and of redoubled 
 measures of control, government after gov- 
 ernment have been compelled to admit their 
 failure in this direction. Laws of this nature 
 always involve an abridgement of individual 
 “ liberty,’’ and of the natural right of every 
 man to do what he “ will ’’ with his own. 
 They involve the assumption, also, that a 
 government, with the exercise of paternal 
 authority can judge better than the citizen 
 what will best subserve his or her welfare, 
 in the use of what they have. “ But such 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 I7I 
 
 action belongs more properly to the spiritual 
 than to the temporal power. In ancient 
 life, where there was a confusion of the two 
 powers in the state system, sumptuary legis- 
 lation was more natural than in the modern 
 world, where those powers have been gener- 
 ally, though imperfectly, separated. ’ 
 
 “ I have learned to doubt," wrote Dr. 
 Dio Lewis, “ whether law is very potent in 
 the cure of moral evil. Force is a good 
 agency in breaking rocks and subduing wild 
 beasts; but in curing immorality, in which 
 we strive to regulate the action and reaction 
 of the faculties and passions of the human 
 soul, force is about as well adapted to our 
 purpose as a sledge-hammer to regulating 
 a watch. Some people seem to have the 
 impression that society is restrained from 
 evil by law; that our wives and daughters 
 are virtuous because there is a law against 
 prostitution; that our exemplary citizens re- 
 frain from profanity and excess in gaming 
 and drinking because they are forbidden by 
 
172 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 law; that somehow society is kept in order 
 by law. 
 
 “It is not denied that Massachusetts has 
 to-day upon her statute-books other laws in- 
 volving the same ^dolation of personal liberty 
 as prohibition; but every law interfering with 
 personal habits and propensities has no prac- 
 tical vitality. 
 
 “ For example, prostitution is an enor- 
 mous evil; and we have a severe statute 
 against it; but, as a matter of fact, if a house 
 of prostitution be conducted in a quiet, un- 
 obtrusive way, the authorities cannot break 
 it up. If any prohibitionist can devise a 
 method by which the authorities can break 
 up such a house, it would be easy to sell 
 his discovery to property holders of New 
 York City for a hundred million of dollars. 
 
 “Scattered throughout this city (Boston) 
 there are unnumbered rooms over stores, 
 and other places of business, and in private 
 houses, occupied by persons who are living 
 in the relation of husband and wife without 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 173 
 
 legal marriage. There are not two punish- 
 ments for every hundred thousand violations 
 of the statutes against such intimacies. 
 
 “ Gambling is very common in our city. 
 There is a great number of rooms, or suites 
 of rooms, devoted to this practice. In club 
 houses and many hotels, gambling may be 
 found every night, and often lasting all night. 
 Not a fiftieth part of the gambling done in 
 this cit3^ takes place in gambling rooms. 
 Why does it never occur to anybody to 
 attempt to enforce the law against gambling 
 in our clubs and other private houses; should 
 they attempt it they would signally fail.” 
 
 Although this was said of New England, 
 it is representative of the United States and 
 the civilized world. A like picture might be 
 drawn of every city in our land and through- 
 out Europe. Every candid and intelligent 
 magistrate, or police official, in the country 
 will admit that the law never has, and never 
 can, prevent gaming, intemperance or prosti- 
 tution. This has been publicly acknowledged 
 
174 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 by the most eminent men of affairs in Europe. 
 That it is impossible to suppress or exter- 
 minate the “social evil” has been demon- 
 strated by Acton, Tait, Parent and Du Cha- 
 telet. The latter avows that “ licensed houses 
 are the most judicious and the most consist- 
 ent with good morals.” The police establish- 
 ments of the continent, finding it impossible 
 to prevent the existence of houses of ill- 
 fame, realized the necessity, not of authoriz- 
 ing, but of licensing them. The vice is now 
 subject to police supervision in Paris, Toulon, 
 Lyons, Strasburg, Brest, Hamburg, Berlin, 
 Vienna, Naples, Brussels, Rheims, Bor- 
 deaux, Marseilles, Copenhagen, Madrid, 
 Malta, Lisbon, Amsterdam and St. Peters- 
 burg. A like policy obtains in Bombay, 
 Hong Kong, Japan, New South Wales and 
 Cape Colony. 
 
 On the contrary, England wages war 
 against prostitution. Is it with success? 
 No; in this respect her cities are the worst 
 in Europe. In that country 42,000 illegitimate 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 175 
 
 children were born in 1851. It was estimated 
 that within the five years preceding, 212,000 
 females had strayed from the paths of virtue, 
 and thus taken the first step in prostitution. 
 In 1832, London had a population of 1,000,000, 
 and her known prostitutes numbered 10,000. 
 Within her limits were then 3,300 brothels. 
 At that time, in Liverpool, there were 5,000 
 fallen women. Of houses of ill-fame Dublin 
 had 355; Edinburgh, 219; Glasgow, 204; 
 Liverpool, 770; Manchester, 308; Birming- 
 ham, 797; Hull, 175; Leeds, 179: Norwich, 
 194. In England, in 1865, there were 500,000 
 prostitutes. It has been computed that the 
 unfortunates number about 86,000 in the 
 London of to-day. It is not surprising, then, 
 that the constabulary of Great Britain are 
 in despair of their power for good over this 
 evil. “ Sooner or later (they realize) the 
 principle of individual liberty must triumph, 
 and prostitution must become, under the 
 shadow of general principles, as unrestricted 
 as any other commerce, moral or immoral.” 
 
176 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 In New York City, also, the law has 
 always attempted to repress the “ social 
 evil,” but without avail. This has been 
 openly recognized by those in authority. 
 In 1875, 1876, and 1877 licensed prostitution 
 was recommended by a committee of the 
 State Legislature, the Grand Jury of the 
 City and County of New York, and the 
 Commissioner of Public Charities and Cor- 
 rection. The committee assumed “ that 
 houses of prostitution must exist;” and its 
 members, therefore, took it upon themselves 
 ” to earnestly recommend to the Legislature 
 the regulating, or permitting,” or, as they 
 phrased it, ” if the word be not deemed 
 offensive, the licensing of prostitution.” In 
 June, 1876, the Grand Jury of the Gourt of 
 General Sessions of the same county and 
 state, made an official presentment concern- 
 ing prostitution, in which they say ‘‘that 
 however abhorrent to the views of some, 
 any legislation may be, which appears to 
 legalize so great an evil, still the fact must 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 177 
 
 not be lost sight of that it is an evil im- 
 possible to suppress, yet comparatively easy 
 to regulate and circumscribe.” They con- 
 clude with a memorial to the Legislature, 
 ” to adopt as early as practicable some system 
 of laws calculated to confine houses of prosti- 
 tution, in the large cities of this state, within 
 certain specified limits, and to subject them 
 at all times to a careful and vigilant super- 
 vision of the Boards of Health and Police.” 
 
 Punitory laws never have, and never 
 will cure the evils to which society is liable. 
 ” Life is sweet,” some one has said, and yet 
 even the death penalty does not prevent 
 murder. If the menace of death is not a 
 deterrent, what can be said for lesser pen- 
 alties like fines and imprisonment. That 
 capital punishment is not a preventive of 
 crime was (upon investigation) the convic- 
 tion of Bentham, Beccaria, George Clinton, 
 Lord Brougham, Judge J. W. Edmunds, 
 William H. Seward, Wendell Phillips, Douglas 
 Jerrold, Cassius M. Clay, Dr. Lushington, 
 
178 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 Edward Livingston, Theodore Parker, \dce- 
 President Dallas, DeWitt Clinton, \hctor 
 Hugo, Mittermaier, John Howard, Sir Samuel 
 Romilly, Earl Russell, Lord Houghton, Lord 
 Osborne, John Bright, Lord Hobart, Lord 
 Kelly, Frederick Robertson, Prof. Fawcett, 
 Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Canning, 
 Thomas Jefferson, and hundreds of other 
 able, thoughtful and conscientious men. 
 Their position was not only grounded on 
 observation, but fortified by the experience 
 of Tuscany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Ba- 
 varia, Belgium, San Marino, Denmark, Nor- 
 way, Sweden, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minne- 
 sota, Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island. 
 “There is no passion in the mind of man,’’ 
 said Lord Bacon, “ so weak, but it mates and 
 masters the fear of death; and therefore 
 death is no such terrible enemy when a man 
 hath so many attendants about him that can 
 win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs 
 over death; love slights it; honor aspireth 
 to it; grief fleeth to it; fear occupieth it.’’ 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 179 
 
 And if “the fear of the great future,” writes 
 Bovee, “ when painted with the horrors such 
 as only a Milton or a Pollok could depict, 
 produces no more marked effect on human 
 action; it is hardly reasonable to suppose 
 that the menace of death by human law, 
 will be very effective in the repression of 
 crime.” 
 
 The truth is clear to Rev. Octavius B. 
 Frothingham. He declares that neither 
 crime nor vice can be prevented, remedied, 
 or expelled by force of law. “Nature will 
 have her way, if not by one channel, then 
 by another. She will plunge underground, 
 and come up in unexpected spots. Cunning 
 comes to her assistance. She makes alliance 
 with subterfuge and deceit. She is sly, swift, 
 ubiquitous. Disappearing in New York, she 
 turns up in Philadelphia. Expelled from 
 the cities, she takes refuge in the towns; 
 banished from the towns, she finds coverts 
 in the cities; hiding in the dens and slums, 
 creeping into the lanes, mingling with the 
 
i8o 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 crowd of harmless things, sheltering herself 
 behind law. She is a Proteus, able to take 
 on every possible shape of innocence. Re- 
 fuse her brandy, she will take opium, mor- 
 phine, ether, tobacco, strong coffee, in quan- 
 tities equivalent to the stimulant desired. 
 You fancy the community becoming tem- 
 perate in one respect, and find it becoming 
 intemperate in another. Opium eaters multi- 
 ply as dram-drinkers decrease. The pro- 
 pensity is alive still, and perhaps provoked 
 to activity by the efforts made to suppress 
 it. The natural appetite being reinforced by 
 anger, spite, the spirit of resistance to perse- 
 cution, which grows dogged and stubborn, 
 fortifying the sense of injustice by the pride 
 of self-will. 
 
 “As if impatient at the slowness of the 
 converting process, weary of the task of plant- 
 ing vice out, of choking the weeds of instinct 
 with the flowers of grace, the church under- 
 took, with violent hand, to pull up the weeds 
 by main force. Instead of abolishing the 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. l8l 
 
 hydra by a beautiful law of evolution, which 
 should create a series of nobler growths; it 
 undertook to cut off the poisonous heads, 
 one by one. It took boys and girls, at the 
 tenderest age, out of the world, confined 
 them in religious houses, refused them the-r 
 joy of the flesh, and the joy of the eyes, and 
 the pride of life, barred the gates of every 
 terrestrial garden, mortified their desires, 
 kept them occupied with prayers and con- 
 templations, and so tried to starve nature to 
 death. 
 
 “ Christianity, was as consistent, tried to 
 repress the disposition to unbelief, in its 
 opinion the most fruitful source of vice. 
 The disposition to unbelief was regarded as 
 the deadliest symptom of the natural, uncon- 
 verted heart. To counteract it by an opposite 
 disposition to belief was tedious and difficult, 
 and the method of repression was resorted 
 to. The civic power was enlisted in the 
 work of exterminating pernicious error. 
 Tribunals were created, laws were passed. 
 
i 82 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 judges and executioners were appointed, 
 penalties were devised, heretical schools were 
 broken up, heretical books were burned, 
 heretical teachers were banished, silenced, 
 incarcerated, consigned to the flames. Whole 
 provinces were devastated, towns were des- 
 troyed, populations turned adrift to perish; 
 the entire field of unorthodox thought was 
 ploughed over and sown with salt. And 
 what was the result of the method, carried 
 out on this vast scale, with full ecclesiastical 
 and civil powers — the sacred and the secular 
 authorities combining, the sympathy of the 
 Christian world aiding, no public opinion 
 opposing, the resources of wealth conspiring 
 with the resources of fanaticism, to make 
 the policy of suppression effective ? The 
 issue is familiar to all who care to know the 
 truth, from the reports of historians, who 
 have made it their business to ascertain and 
 tell the facts. They certainly do not bear 
 out the conclusion that the method of sup- 
 pression is wise, or even practical. On the 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 83 
 
 contrary, they suggest the opinion that it 
 is impractical as it is unwise. The failure 
 of the method was so disastrous that it quite 
 defeated the ends. 
 
 “If one thing is demonstrated by human 
 history, it is this: — the attempt to suppress 
 human nature, under any form, so it be 
 nature that is suppressed, is futile. The 
 old proverbs, which say, ‘ Drive nature out 
 at the door, and she comes in at the window;’ 
 ‘You cannot expel nature with a fork;’ hold 
 out a truth that is for all time. 
 
 Deeply rooted propensities, habits which 
 have become a second nature, cannot be 
 thus dealt with. No Hercules’ club will 
 avail to kill the vital principle that grows 
 venomous heads faster than they can be 
 bruised. The effort to suppress nature by 
 violent measures, is always followed, always 
 produces a reaction, that is exactly propor- 
 tioned in strength to the effort, and fairly bal- 
 ances it. Healthy progress Is slow, gradual, 
 measured, according to the sure conditions 
 
184 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 of cause and effect. It consists of a long 
 line of close sequences, knit together, not 
 mechanically, like a chain, but organically, 
 like a muscle or a nerve. Every inch of 
 growth implies a preceding inch of growth; 
 there is no such thing as jump or leap from 
 point to point. You do not make the elastic 
 band longer by stretching it; you but loosen 
 the cohesion of its parts; the strain being 
 relaxed, the band resumes its first condition; 
 the strain being continued, the band looses 
 its elasticity and breaks. There is no more 
 power than there is.” 
 
 M. Guizot, statesman and historian, 
 thought it a gross delusion to believe in 
 the sovereign power of political machinery. 
 Every day discloses a failure, every day 
 there reappears the belief that it needs but 
 an act of some legislative body and a corps 
 of officials to effect any purpose. The faith 
 of mankind is nowhere better seen. Dis- 
 appointment has been preached from the 
 first: “Put not thy trust in legislation.” Yet 
 
LKGISLA i lVE EXORCISM. 
 
 185 
 
 the trust in legislation seems scarcely dimin- 
 ished. Is it not time to reject the law as 
 a social panacea? We should now realize 
 that measures are usually quite different in 
 effect from what has been expected. It 
 would be difficult to estimate the number 
 of legislative disappointments in English and 
 American history; “or the amount of harm 
 which has been inflicted on society by abor- 
 tive attempts at statesmanship.” History 
 demonstrates the incapacity of law-givers. 
 Says Mr. Jensen, “ From the statute of 
 Merton (20 Henry III.) to the end of 1872, 
 there had been passed 18, no public acts, 
 of which he estimated that four-fifths had 
 been partially or wholly repealed.” And 
 Herbert Spencer estimated a few years ago 
 that “ in the last three sessions of the 
 English parliament, there have been totally 
 repealed 650 acts, belonging to the present 
 reign alone.” 
 
 Buckle said, in this connection, every 
 great reform has consisted “ not in doing 
 
I 86 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 something new, but in undoing something 
 old. The most valuable additions made to 
 legislation have been enactments destruc- 
 tive of preceding legislation, and the best 
 laws which have been passed have been 
 those by which some former laws were re- 
 pealed. . . . We owe no thanks to law- 
 
 givers as a class; for, since the most valu- 
 able improvements in legislation are those 
 which subvert preceding legislation, it is 
 clear that the balance of good cannot be 
 on their side. It is clear that the progress 
 of civilization cannot be due to those who, 
 on the most important subjects, have done 
 so much harm that their successors are con- 
 sidered benefactors, simply because they 
 reverse their policy, and thus restored affairs 
 to the state in which they would have re- 
 mained, if politicians had allowed them to 
 run on in the course which the wants of 
 society required.” 
 
 In the name of ‘‘liberty and equality,” a 
 brave battle has been fought for individuality. 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 187 
 
 Unjust and unwise interference by the state 
 has been ably resisted. It is demanded that 
 private judgment be released from the em- 
 brace of authority. The truth is, one man 
 has no natural right to make laws for an- 
 other. True, he may repel another, when 
 his own rights are infringed, but he has no 
 right to govern him. The individual is 
 sovereign merely over himself, and not over 
 his fellow-man. 
 
 The greatest minds now insist an indi- 
 vidual will more freely act, not only for the 
 furtherance of personal interests, but also 
 for collective interests, without being con- 
 strained thereto by an external power. 
 Whenever room is to be made, they say, 
 for the advance of society, public authority 
 must retire within its narrowest jurisdiction; 
 yielding, because of its impracticability, all 
 control over concerns purely personal. “ Who 
 remembers having done anything, or having 
 refrained from doing anything, on account 
 of the statutes? If we could realize how 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 little civil law contributes to the good con- 
 duct and well-being of society, our interest 
 in legislators would be greatly lessened. Of 
 the millions upon millions of acts of kind- 
 ness and justice which go to make up civil- 
 ized life, I take it that nine in ten would 
 not be performed at all, if they were required 
 by law. 
 
 John Stuart Mill has clearly defined the 
 limit of individual “sovereignty” — as it is 
 termed — and where the authority of society 
 should begin. “ Each will receive its proper 
 share, if each has that which more particu- 
 larly concerns it. To individuality should 
 belong the part of life in which it is chiefly 
 the individual that is interested; to society, 
 the part which chiefly interests society. 
 
 “ The acts of an individual may be hurtful 
 to others, or wanting in due consideration 
 for their welfare, without going the length 
 of violating their constituted rights. The 
 offender may then be justly punished by 
 opinion, though not by law. As soon as any 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 89 
 
 part of a person’s conduct affects prejudici- 
 ally the interests of others, society has juris- 
 diction over it, and the question whether 
 the general welfare will or will not be pro- 
 moted by interfering with it, becomes an 
 open one. But there is no room for enter- 
 taining any such question, when a person’s 
 conduct affects the interest of no person 
 besides himself, or need not affect them un- 
 less they like, all the persons concerned 
 being of full age, and with the ordinary 
 amount of understanding. In all such cases 
 there should be perfect freedom, legal and 
 social, to do the action and stand the con- 
 sequences.” 
 
 Everybody agrees with this proposition, in 
 the abstract. At this period of time, nobody 
 would dispute “personal liberty,” as a “glit- 
 tering generality.” People are too smart 
 for that. It would be impolite and unfashion- 
 able. They would agree with you, perhaps, 
 that “personal liberty” is the source of all 
 progress, the lever of all conquests, the in- 
 
I <50 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 spiration of all achievements. “ Tlie great, 
 vital, pivotal fact of human life; all progress 
 and all happiness begin and end in personal 
 freedom.” O yes, they will readily agree 
 with the rhetoric involved. ‘‘The prize, the 
 precious jewel of the ages, is personal liberty. 
 It has no equivalents. Untold wealth, a 
 mine of diamonds, a palace, are baubles by 
 the side of personal liberty. We recognize 
 the supreme importance of this principle. 
 We are willing that all men should be free — 
 if they will only do what is best for them. 
 We rejoice in the utmost liberty of opinion 
 and action — if people will only do and say 
 what is right.” 
 
 Thus Is ‘‘ freedom ” trespassed upon, under 
 pretence that is for the good of the man 
 or men whose rights are violated. Such 
 was probably the pretext for every tyrannical 
 invasion of popular rights known to history. 
 Thus was it quaintly put by Dio Lewis: 
 ‘‘The Inquisition believed in the perfect 
 liberty of all men to be Catholics, but if 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 IQI 
 
 they caught a man with other notions about 
 salvation, they put a thumb-screw on him. 
 Our Puritan fathers believed in personal 
 freedom as no other men ever did. They left 
 their homes, crossed a stormy ocean, and 
 braved a thousand dangers, that they might 
 be free to think and say what they pleased. 
 And they were perfectly willing that all who 
 came along might think and say what they 
 pleased, unless, as sometimes unfortunately 
 happened, the other men said and thought 
 things which conflicted with the things which 
 the fathers thought and said. They some- 
 times came across a Quaker, whose views did 
 not seem quite the thing, and they hung him. 
 Our New England fathers believed in ‘religi- 
 ous liberty.’ Indeed, ‘religious liberty’ was 
 their constant boast; but if a man did not 
 believe in hell, they would not let him testify 
 in court. . . . But our fathers were 
 
 always very kind about it; they said he was 
 at liberty, perfect liberty, at any time to believe 
 in hell, and then he might swear a blue streak.” 
 
IQ2 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 What is really meant by this definition 
 of “ pei'sonal liberty” is the absolute right 
 of every individual that every other individual 
 shall act, in every respect, exactly as he 
 ought; “that whosoever fails thereof, in the 
 smallest particular, violates my social right 
 and entitles me to demand of the legislature 
 the removal of the grievance.” “This doc- 
 trine,” continued Mill, “ascribes to all man- 
 kind a vested interest in each other’s moral, 
 intellectual, and physical perfection, to be 
 defined by each claimant, according to his 
 own standard.” 
 
 Of this class of men Dr. Lewis well said: 
 “They consider themselves born to control 
 other men. They are ever inquiring, ‘What 
 ought this man to do?’ and if that man 
 refuses to do it, ‘How can we compel him?’ 
 They proceed thus: ‘ Resolved, That the 
 righteous should govern the world. Re- 
 solved, That we are the righteous.’ ” 
 
 In what language can I fitly designate 
 a principle of action so impertinent and 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 193 
 
 presumptious? Who can deny the moral 
 “liberty” of his fellow creature, as an abstract 
 proposition? Is not the moral equality, or 
 independence of man one of his essential 
 rights? Neither one, nor any number of 
 persons, is warranted in saying to another 
 of mature years, what the latter shall, or 
 shall not do with his life for his own benefit. 
 “He is most deeply interested in his own 
 well-being; the interest which another person 
 can have in it is trifling, compared with that 
 which he himself has.” It is time for society 
 to distinguish, sharply, between the province 
 of morality and that of legislation. With 
 the same end in view, perhaps, yet they 
 should differ widely in extent. Admit that 
 morals and the law have the same center, 
 they have not the same circumference. 
 There may be a moral guide to the conduct 
 of an individual, through all the details of 
 life, through all the relationships of society; 
 but legislation cannot be this, and if it 
 could, it ought not to exercise a continued 
 
194 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 and direct interference with the conduct of 
 men. There are many acts useful to the 
 community which the legislator ought never 
 to command ; so are there many hurtful 
 acts, which he ought not to forbid. There is 
 certainly a broad distinction between moral 
 and legal rights. For instance, “a man has 
 no moral right to hate his wife, but he has 
 a perfect legal right to hate her. A man 
 has no moral right to foreclose a mortgage 
 on a sick widow’s home, and turn her and 
 her children out in the snow, but he has a 
 perfect legal right to do it. A man has no 
 moral right to make a glutton of himself, 
 destroy his usefulness, and thus throw his 
 wife and children on the town, but he has 
 a perfect legal right to do it.” A man has 
 no moral right to drink rum, but he has a 
 perfect legal right to do so. W hat actions, 
 then, may be legally punished as offenses? 
 “What a question,” I hear some one exclaim; 
 “are not all men agreed upon it? Do you 
 ask us to prove an acknowledged truth.” 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 195 
 
 I answer in words of the great Jeremy Bent- 
 ham: “ Be it so. But on what is founded 
 that agreement? Demand of each his 
 reasons. You will find a strange diversity 
 of interest and principles. You will find it 
 not only among the people, but among phil- 
 osophers. . . . The agreement which you 
 
 see is founded only on prejudices; and these 
 prejudices vary, according to the times and 
 places, according to opinions and customs. 
 . . . People have always said that such 
 
 an action is an offense. Such is the guide 
 of the multitude, and even of the legislator. 
 But if usage has made innocent actions 
 crimes ; if it makes venial offenses appear 
 heavy, and heavy offences light; if it has 
 varied everywhere, it is clear that we must 
 subject it to some rule. 
 
 Vices are not rightly punishable by law. 
 They are amenable to education only. Should 
 A. assist B. to indulge in a vice, and A. uses 
 no fraud or coercion, and B. is compos mentis, 
 A. is not guilty of a crime, in the proper 
 
iq6 legislative exorcism. 
 
 sense. Suppose A. were a cook, who com- 
 pounds for B. rich and delicious dishes, and 
 of which B. partakes to such an extent that 
 he sickens and dies, A. is not guilty of a 
 crime. Neither is B.’s indulgence in the 
 strong food or strong drink a crime punish- 
 able by law, only a vice amenable to dis- 
 cretion and judgment. 
 
 Correctly considered, then, a crime is an 
 act which one man, with “ malice prepense,” 
 commits upon the person or property of 
 another, without that other’s consent. Crime 
 may be subject to law. A vice, on the other 
 hand, is any act or passion in which a person 
 may indulge himself: malice, hypocris}', pride, 
 envy, hatred, avarice, ambition, profanity, 
 falsehood, indolence, cowardice, drunkenness, 
 gluttony, tyranny, fanaticism, extravagance, 
 etc., etc. Unless this distinction be recognized 
 by the law, there can be no such thing as indi- 
 vidual right, liberty or property, “ no such 
 thing as the right of one man to the control of 
 his own person and property, and the corres- 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 197 
 
 ponding and co-equal right of another man to 
 the control of his own person and property.” 
 
 An eminent and respected physician once 
 said to an enlightened audience: “ Not a per- 
 son before me, but has suffered from vices; in- 
 deed, that is what we mean by the imperfec- 
 tion of human nature. When we depart from 
 perfection it is a vice. Everybody is guilty of 
 vices. The people before me, forty years old, 
 should not be so old at fifty or sixty. Their 
 teeth are decayed, and they have imperfect 
 digestion. They do not enjoy the full and 
 happy play of all their powers and faculties, 
 and the greater part of this waste comes 
 from vices. There are certain secret vices 
 which cannot be publicly named, which are 
 doing more to break down our vital force, 
 make us prematurely old, and fetter our 
 souls, than all the crimes committed in the 
 country, and the legislature can do nothing 
 to cure them. 
 
 “ Without doubt, gluttony is the most 
 destructive of all our vices. It obtains 
 
igS legislativf; exorcism. 
 
 among all classes, all ages, and both sexes. 
 Eminent medical men, in England and 
 America, declare that strong food can count 
 ten victims, where strong drink counts one. 
 
 “Tobacco is doing more injury to the 
 minds and bodies of our nation than all 
 the murder, theft, burglary, and arson, and 
 yet the legislature can do nothing to cure 
 the tobacco curse.” 
 
 Dr. Lewis wisely continues: “It is not 
 often possible to say of those acts that are 
 called vices, that they are really vices ex- 
 cept in degree. That is, it is difficult to 
 say of any actions, or courses of action, 
 that are called vices, that they really would 
 have been vices, if they had stopped short 
 of a certain point. The question of vice 
 or virtue, therefore, in all such cases, is a 
 question of quantity and degree, and not 
 of the intrinsic character of any single act, 
 by itself. This fact adds to the difficulty, 
 not to say the impossibility, of any one’s 
 — except each individual for himself — draw- 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 199 
 
 ing any accurate line, or anything like an 
 accurate line, between virtue and vice; that 
 is, of telling where virtue ends and vice 
 begins. And this is another reason why 
 this whole question of virtue and vice should 
 be left for each person to settle for him- 
 self. Vices are usually pleasurable, at least 
 for the time being, and often do not dis- 
 close themselves as vices, by their effects, 
 until they have been practiced for many 
 years, or perhaps for a life-time. To 
 many, perhaps most, of those who practice 
 them, they do not disclose themselves as 
 vices, at all during life. Virtues, on the 
 other hand, often appear so harsh and 
 rugged, they require the sacrifice of so 
 much present happiness, at least, and the 
 results which alone prove them to be vir- 
 tues, are so often distant and obscure, in 
 fact so absolutely invisible to the minds of 
 many, especially of the young, that, from 
 the very nature of things, there can be no 
 universal or even general knowledge that 
 
200 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 they are virtues. In truth, the studies of 
 profound philosophers have been expended 
 — if not wholly in vain, certainly with very 
 small results — in efforts to draw the lines 
 between virtues and vices. 
 
 “ If then, it be so difficult, so nearly im- 
 possible, in most cases, to determine what 
 is and what is not, vice; and especially if 
 it be so difficult in nearly all cases to de- 
 termine where virtue ends and where vice 
 begins; and if these questions, which no one 
 can really and truly determine for anybody 
 but himself, are not to be left open and 
 free for experiment by all, each person 
 is deprived of the highest of all his rights 
 as a human being; to wit: his right to inquire, 
 investigate, reason, try experiments, judge 
 and ascertain for himself, vdiat is, to him, 
 virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other 
 words, what, on the whole, conduces to his 
 happiness, and what, on the vdiole, tends to 
 his unhappiness. If this great right is not to 
 be left free and open to all, then each man’s 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 201 
 
 whole right as a reasoning human being, 
 to liberty and the pursuit of happiness is 
 denied him.” “ It is now obvious, for the 
 reasons already given, that government 
 would be utterly impracticable, if it were to 
 take cognizance of vices and punish them 
 as crimes. Every human being has his, or 
 her, vices. Nearly all men have a great 
 many. And they are of all kinds: physio- 
 logical, mental, emotional, religious, social, 
 commercial, industrial, economical, etc. If 
 government is to take cognizance of any of 
 these vices, and punish them as crimes, then, 
 to be consistent, it must take cognizance of 
 all and punish all impartially. The con- 
 sequences would be, that everybody would 
 be in prison for his, or her, vices. There 
 would be no one left to lock the doors upon 
 those within. In fact, courts enough could 
 not be found to try the offenders, nor prisons 
 enough built to hold them. All human in- 
 dustry in the acquisition of . knowledge, and 
 even in acquiring the means of subsistence. 
 
202 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 would be arrested; we should be all under 
 constant trial or imprisonment for our vices. 
 But even if it were possible to imprison all 
 the vicious, our knowledge of human nature 
 tells us that, as a general rule, they would 
 be far more vicious in prison than they ever 
 have been out of it. A government that 
 shall punish all vices impartially, is so obvi- 
 ously an impossibility, that nobody was ever 
 found, or ever will be found, foolish enough 
 to propose it. The most that any one pro- 
 poses is, that government shall punish some 
 one, or, at most a few, of what he esteems 
 the grossest of them.” 
 
 ‘‘ But this discrimination is an utterly 
 absurd, illogical and tyrannical one. What 
 right has any body of men to say, ‘ The 
 vices of other men we will punish, but our 
 own vices nobody shall punish ? We will 
 restrain other men from seeking their own 
 happiness, according to their own notions 
 of it; but nobody shall restrain us from 
 seeking our own happiness, according to our 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 203 
 
 notion of it. We will restrain other men 
 from acquiring any experimental knowledge 
 of what is conducive or necessary to their 
 own happiness; but nobody shall restrain 
 us from acquiring an experimental knowl- 
 edge of what is conducive or necessary to 
 our own happiness.” Nobody but knaves 
 and blockheads ever think of any such 
 absurd assumptions as these. And yet, 
 evidently, it is only upon such assumptions 
 that anybody can claim the right to pun- 
 ish the vices of others, and at the same 
 time claim exemption from punishment for 
 his own. The greatest of all crimes are 
 the wars that are carried on by govern- 
 ments to plunder, destro}^ and enslave man- 
 kind.” 
 
 It has been asserted that gambling is 
 a vice. I deny that such is the case. 
 The proposition cannot be established, as 
 an absolute principle. If a man chooses to 
 risk his money, on a game of cards, he 
 has a perfect right to do so, in the ab- 
 
204 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 stract, and no man, or any body of men, 
 has a right to forbid him. “ It is his money, 
 and he has a right to do what he chooses 
 with it. He has a legal right to put it in 
 a gun and shoot it away, or burn it up, or 
 risk it on a game of chance, or make any 
 other disposition of it, and no man, or body 
 of men, has a right to interfere.” For my 
 purpose, as a question of law, the real ques- 
 tion is whether a man may dispose of his 
 own as he chooses? If so, then he has a 
 right to wager it on a game of cards, or 
 at dice; and it is absurd to treat as criminal 
 another man who may join in with him in 
 gaming, as an antagonist. In other \vords, 
 “ If John has at any time or in any place, 
 the right to wager his money on a game 
 of chance, then it is absurd to treat as 
 criminal the helping John to do what he 
 has a right to do. If one participant in a 
 transaction is guilty of crime, so is the other. 
 But if one participant is guiltless, then the 
 other is guiltless.” 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 205 
 
 The keepers of gambling resorts are de- 
 nounced, as though they were responsible 
 for the gambling propensity in mankind. 
 Now, resorts for gambling do not cause the 
 passion. It is a tendency to which all men 
 are prone, more or less. “The essential 
 fact is the existence of this passion. There 
 can never be any great difficulty in obtain- 
 ing the means for its gratification.” If not 
 one way, then in another. If at all, at- 
 tack the principle, in whatever guise or by 
 whomsoever practiced. If some methods 
 are denounced, then should all methods be 
 denounced. If those who furnish certain 
 “ means to the end ” are to be punished as 
 criminals, then should all persons who fur- 
 nish any “means to the end.” But to 
 punish any such person is erroneous and 
 very short sighted; for the primary cause 
 of the trouble, if such it be, is the desire 
 for gaming. It is impossible to prevent 
 its gratification. As wisely attempt “ to 
 make one’s hair white or black ” by virtue 
 
2o6 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 of “ the statute in such cases made and 
 provided.” 
 
 Suppose the law efficacious, with what 
 consistency does our jurisprudence make 
 gambling a crime? In general, at common 
 law, all games are lawful, unless fraud has 
 been practiced. Each of the parties must 
 have a right to the money or thing played 
 for. He must give his free and full con- 
 sent, and the play must be conducted 
 fairly. The mutual promises of the parties 
 to the wager are held a sufficient con- 
 sideration. A large number of such actions 
 have been sustained by the courts of Eng- 
 land and the United States. 
 
 Eor example, it was held that a wager 
 of fifty guineas by one of the litigants that 
 an appeal from a decree of Chancery 
 would be reversed by the House of Lords, 
 was not, of itself, void, there being no 
 charge of fraud. So, wagers as to the 
 time when a railroad would be completed; 
 or, as to the name of a person whom one 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 207 
 
 of the parties had seen; or, as to the age 
 •of one of the parties; or, upon the price 
 of an article of commerce; or, as to who 
 would die first, of two persons not privy 
 to the wager; or, as to whether A. would 
 hit a target; or, upon foot or horse races; 
 were held valid. Indeed, the tendency of 
 the courts to discourage wagers of every 
 nature is relatively of recent date. In 
 many of the United States, the doctrine 
 has been abrogated by statute. Texas, 
 Delaware, California, and some other states 
 still adhere to the English rule. 
 
 Some of the judgments in England were 
 rendered by the greatest of judicial minds: 
 Lord Mansfield, Lord Holt, Lord Hard- 
 wicke and Lord Kenyon. In the language 
 of Lord Holt: “When considered in itself, 
 there is nothing in a wager, contrary to 
 natural equity, and the contract will be con- 
 sidered as a reciprocal gift, which the parties 
 make of the thing played for, under certain 
 conditions,” Lord Mansfield laid it down, 
 
208 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 that wagers are actionable; “and that the 
 restraints imposed on certain species, 
 acts of parliament, are exceptions to the 
 general rule, and prove it.” And Lord 
 Kenyon declared in Good vs. Elliott; “ Be- 
 ing bound by former decisions, not having 
 the power to alter the law, not finding 
 any one case against the legality of wagers 
 in general, and finding cases without num- 
 ber, wherein wagers have been held to be 
 good, and that the payment of them may 
 be enforced, I adjudge the wager in the 
 present case good at common law.” It 
 was a wager that A. had purchased a cer- 
 tain wagon of B. 
 
 The source of our jurisprudence is the 
 common law of England. Gambling was 
 not a crime under this system, and here it 
 would enforce the contract of wager. I 
 therefore denounce as incongruous and irra- 
 tional a statute which seeks to punish the 
 wagerer as a criminal. 
 
 Crime, at common law is something 
 
LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 209 
 
 essential, so, in its very nature; grounded 
 in the Mosaic decalogue and the reason 
 of things: murder, mayhem, adultery, rob- 
 bery, theft, arson. The wager is akin to 
 none of these, nor does it come within 
 their spirit. The common law branded as 
 a criminal him only whom God had thus 
 branded. The wagerer was not of the 
 number. 
 
 In a word, is gambling malum in se? In 
 answer, the common conviction of men has 
 never so regarded it. The common law 
 has ever recognized a boundary line which 
 separates the mala in se from the mala 
 prohibita. In law, a thing is malum in se 
 when absolutely evil in itself; “not, indeed, 
 in a philosophical sense, ’ says the eminent 
 lawyer, James C. Carter, “but absolutely, 
 according to the universal conviction, in 
 the political society which so views it; and 
 mala prohibita are those things, otherwise 
 innocent or indifferent, which the legislative 
 power, having control over the subject, may 
 
210 
 
 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 
 
 declare to be offenses.” Although not 77ialum 
 iTt se, gambling may be 77iahi77i p7'ohibittmi. 
 If the latter, then it becomes merely a 
 question of public policy whether or not 
 the state shall license gambling, subject to 
 such conditions as the police power might 
 impose. At any rate, to the extent that 
 government is a moral entity, it cannot 
 rightfully punish gambling as being bad 
 in itself. 
 
“tTbe Iking is S>eab— Xong 
 Xive tbe Iking.” 
 
 ( 211 ) 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 IF^mg is DeaD— Xong Xiv?e tbe Iking.” 
 
 E xpressive was the coronation cere- 
 mony in the ancient Dukedom of 
 Carinthia. The ducal candidate, in a peas- 
 ant’s garb, and with head proudly erect, 
 walked towards the marble throne of his 
 ancestors. But upon it was already seated 
 a peasant, attended by the black bull and 
 the lean horse — those sad and severe sym- 
 bols of his class. Then was commenced 
 between them this rude dialogue: 
 
 Peasant: — “Who so proudly dares enter 
 here? Is he a just judge? Has he the 
 good of the country at heart?” 
 
 Duke: — “ He is and he will.” 
 
 ( 213 ) 
 
214 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 Peasant: — “I demand by what right he 
 will force me to quit this place?” 
 
 Duke: — “ He will buy it of you for sixty 
 pennies, and the horse and the bull shall 
 be yours.” 
 
 Nowhere, in the past, was the sovereignty 
 of the people more haughtily declared, than 
 in this formality of the old Carinthians. 
 “ It bears the seal of remote antiquity — of 
 an Homeric or Biblical simplicity.” That 
 the people were the only true source of 
 power, was admitted even in the archaic 
 periods of history. Of olden time, there 
 were many forms of popular government. 
 Aristotle made a study of their institutions. 
 Greece had her democracies and Italy a 
 great republic. In Asia, then, as now, the 
 assertion of political power was the sole 
 foundation for its maintenance. 
 
 With the development of Christianity, 
 in Europe, was inculcated the theoretic idea. 
 Kings were anointed and they ruled b}^ 
 “ divine right.” In the language of Mr. 
 
THE ICING IS DEAD. 
 
 215 
 
 Tiedeman: “The king, who in theory ob- 
 tained his authority from God, acknowledged 
 no natural rights in the individual. Indi- 
 vidual activity, for its room, depended upon 
 the monarch’s will.” In time, however, came 
 the Reformation and political revolutions in 
 England, France, the Netherlands, Spain 
 and Italy. To-day, the “divine right” of 
 kings is generally repudiated. It has been 
 displaced by the ancient principle that all 
 power is derived from the people. “The 
 people were once subjects of the king. The 
 government is now subject to the people.” 
 “ The king is dead,” but his functions yet 
 live in “ the state,” or the people. 
 
 While many ancient statesmen and publi- 
 cists recognized the proper origin of power 
 in government, their opinions as to its nature 
 and extent were neither clear nor sound. 
 Wherever lodged, in their judgment, power 
 was limitless and irresponsible. Whether 
 exercised by king or emperor, by an aris- 
 tocracy or the people, it was absolute. 
 
2i6 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 Politically, in other words, the individual was 
 annihilated by the state. Government did 
 not permit the existence of any personal 
 right that it “was bound to respect.” This 
 is also true of later times, in continental 
 Europe. True, the “divine right” of kings 
 was repudiated, but not the doctrine of ab- 
 solutism. “ Vox Populi, Vox Dei',' became 
 the general answer to all complaints of the 
 individual against the encroachments of 
 popular government upon his rights and 
 liberty.” In the name of the people, atrocious 
 crimes were perpetrated by revolutionary 
 governments. 
 
 In its proper sense, individual liberty is 
 a development of the Anglo-Saxon institu- 
 tions. This doctrine is fundamental to the 
 English Constitution. The principle is car- 
 dinal and vital in the American system of 
 government. Individual rights are protected 
 by constitutional restrictions upon power, 
 federal and state. In the United States, 
 every individual is a king. This accords 
 
THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 217 
 
 with the so-called laissez-faire doctrine, of 
 modern development in England and the 
 United States, which confines the sphere of 
 government within the narrowest limits, and 
 denies to it the power to do more than 
 provide for public order and personal se- 
 curity, by the prevention and punishment 
 of crimes and trespasses. Under the influ- 
 ence of this wholesome principle, with us 
 and in Great Britain, for one hundred years, 
 the encroachments of government upon the 
 rights and liberties of the individual have 
 been comparatively few. 
 
 In other words, it has been generally ad- 
 mitted by the wisest and broadest states- 
 manship, that private rights and personal 
 liberty do not exist by the permission of 
 municipal law. They are natural and founded 
 upon the law of reason ; that, therefore, 
 governmental restraint should “ only go to 
 the limit necessary to a uniform and reason- 
 able conservation of private rights.” Muni- 
 cipal law protects and develops, rather 
 
2i8 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 than creates private rights and personal 
 liberty. 
 
 In the United States this “limit” has 
 been generally fixed at the power to enforce 
 the common and civil law maxim, ''sic utere 
 tuo, ut alieum non Icedasi' The “ police 
 power,” it is called, and extends, in its 
 broadest sense, to the preservation of peace 
 and good order to the protection of property 
 rights, “ and of the lives, limbs, health and 
 comfort of all persons.” Any law which 
 goes beyond this, in the United States, at 
 least, and undertakes to abolish rights, the 
 exercise of which do not infringe upon the 
 rights of others; or limits the exercise of 
 rights beyond what is necessary for the 
 public welfare and general security, is not 
 properly within the police power. 
 
 The police power, then, is properly con- 
 cerned only with crimes and trespasses. It 
 cannot rightfully invade the realm of ethics, 
 as such. Crime is theoretically a direct in- 
 jury to the public, and trespass, a direct in- 
 
THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 2IQ 
 
 jury to the individual. A vice, on the con- 
 trary, is the inordinate gratification of one's 
 desires and passions. The primary damage 
 is to one’s self. In contemplating the na- 
 ture of a vice, we are not conscious of a 
 trespass on the rights of others. Vice does 
 not fall within the police power. Expressed 
 in the language of Mr. Tiedeman, “the 
 object of police power, is the prevention 
 of crime — the protection of rights against 
 the assaults of others. The police power 
 of the government cannot properly be 
 brought into operation for the purpose of 
 exacting obedience to the rules of morality, 
 and banishing vice and sin from the world. 
 The moral laws can exact obedience only 
 in joro conscientics . The municipal law has 
 only to do v.^ith trespasses. It cannot be 
 called into play in order to save one from 
 the evil consequences of his own vices, for 
 the violation of a right, by the action of 
 another, must exist or be threatened, in 
 order to justify the interference of law.” 
 
220 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 The people of this country are generally 
 convinced of this truth. So widespread is 
 the conviction that, where a law “ does not 
 have for its object the prevention or pun- 
 ishment of a trespass upon rights, it is 
 impossible to obtain for it an enthusiastic 
 and unanimous support.” Besides, it is true 
 of every community, when “ public opinion 
 is aroused to an activity that will enforce 
 a law for the prevention of vice, the moral 
 force alone will be ample to suppress it.” 
 But it is sometimes urged that an other- 
 wise ineffectual statute may serve to direct 
 public opinion in the right direction. To 
 this I reply that one unerring truth is taught 
 by the history of legislation; ” It is the 
 utter futility, in a corrective sense, of a law 
 whose enactment is not the unavoidable re- 
 sultant of the forces then in play in organ- 
 ized society. Nothing so weakens the rever- 
 ence for law, and diminishes its effective- 
 ness, as still-born statutes.” 
 
 Certain matters are generally recognized 
 
THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 221 
 
 to be within the police power of the state. 
 For instance, the control of infectious and 
 contagious diseases, of the insane, of habi- 
 tual drunkards, spendthrifts, vagrants and 
 mendicants. And finally, by forced con- 
 struction, it has been extended to the 
 liquor traffic. The law, it is said, may pro- 
 hibit the sale of liquor to minors, lunatics, 
 persons intoxicated, confirmed inebriates, 
 and other persons with certain weaknesses 
 of character. Courts maintain that while 
 the liquor traffic is subject to the police 
 power, yet it may not be entirely forbidden 
 as necessarily injurious to the public in a 
 legal sense. To quote the Supreme Court 
 of Indiana, in Beabe vs. State: “Where 
 injury does result (from the use of bever- 
 ages) it is usually caused by the shortcom- 
 ings of the purchaser, without any partici- 
 pation in the wrong of the seller. No 
 business can be prohibited altogether, un- 
 less its prosecution is necessarily and essen- 
 tially injurious. It is the abuse and not 
 
222 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 the use of beverages that is hurtful. The 
 use of beverages is not necessarily destruc- 
 tive to the community. . . . Fire-arms 
 
 and gunpowder are not manufactured to 
 shoot innocent persons, but are often so 
 misapplied. Axes and hatchets are not 
 made and sold to break heads with, but 
 are often used for that purpose. Yet who 
 has ever contended the manufacture and 
 sale of these articles should be prohibited 
 as a nuisance. We repeat, the manufacture 
 and sale of liquors are not necessarily hurt- 
 ful, and therefore may not be entirely pro- 
 hibited.” 
 
 So much for the “police power,” gener- 
 ally considered. But what of its relation to 
 gambling, if any? If the practice is neither 
 a crime nor a trespass, then it is not rightfully 
 subject to public regulation. I have demon- 
 strated to the candid judgment that, of itself, 
 gambling is not essentially wrong. I insist 
 that, at least, in the absence of fraud and 
 chicane, it is neither sinful, nor criminal. 
 
THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 223 
 
 To gamble with another is not to assault 
 his person or property by main force. To 
 wager or bet upon the laws of chance, deceit 
 aside, is not to kill, maim, rob, or cheat 
 your fellow man; the players freely partici- 
 pate in the hope of gain or for amusement. 
 Then wherein is the action either felonious 
 or tortious? Why should the police power 
 interfere? That it cannot properly do so, 
 under our institutions, is conceded by Mr. 
 Tiedeman. He is an able and accomplished 
 lawyer, and recognized by the profession as 
 an authority on the subject. But it may be 
 said, the effects are injurious, and for that 
 reason the state may forbid the practice. 
 That gambling is “ necessarily and essenti- 
 ally” injurious to society, I deny. As a 
 pastime, it is innocent, as a principle of 
 action it permeates the business world. If 
 an amusement, it may be abused to the detri- 
 ment of certain individuals, but the abuse 
 of a thing, innocent in itself, does not make 
 that thing a crime. When an occupation. 
 
224 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 it is but natural that the laws of chance 
 should operate unevenly; to the advantage 
 of some and to the disadvantage of others. 
 Uniformity of success in affairs is impossible. 
 
 Throughout the business world, in every 
 department of human activity, the losers 
 but bear a fixed proportion to the winners. 
 Some must fail that others may succeed. 
 Such is the law of existence, as society is 
 constituted to-day. We are not now con- 
 cerned with ideals. The realities suffice for 
 my purpose. Chance is at present the great 
 motive power of the world. It sustains hope, 
 and stimulates endeavor. Through its oper- 
 ation men are enriched and nations aggran- 
 dized. That some meet with disaster and 
 encounter misfortune does not prove that 
 appeals to chance are criminal in their 
 nature, nor that such appeals are “ neces- 
 sarily and essentially” injurious to the state 
 Consistently, therefore, gambling cannot be 
 forbidden because in its pursuit some persons 
 are fool-hardy and others unfortunate. 
 
THE KING IS DEAD. 
 
 225 
 
 I may be asked, “ What do you sug- 
 gest?” I would license gambling, and place 
 it under such restrictions as would tend to 
 lessen its abuse. I am willing, for practical 
 purposes, to concede this much to the police 
 power. If this policy may be claimed for 
 the liquor traffic, why not for gambling 
 also? Is gambling more injurious than in- 
 temperance? No, the victims of alcohol 
 outnumber the unfortunate gamblers a thou- 
 sand to one. The habitual use of intoxi- 
 cants is necessarily and uniformly injurious 
 to the individual. This is not true of 
 gambling, as a pastime. The player may 
 win. Some of the players must win. What- 
 ever can be said against the prohibition of 
 the liquor traffic, applies with greater force 
 to gambling. If there are reasons why 
 the sale of intoxicants may be licensed, by 
 the state and municipal authorities, such 
 reasons serve but to demand a like privilege 
 for gambling. Briefly, the rule laid down 
 by the Indiana Supreme Court as to the 
 
226 
 
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 liquor traffic, in Beabe vs. State, is clearly 
 applicable to games of chance as a business. 
 This is obvious from the whole tenor of 
 my discussion. If the state is not willing 
 to take this step, then leave the matter to 
 “local option.” Leave it to the municipal 
 authorities, whether gambling is to be per- 
 mitted or not, in a given locality. Let it 
 be a question of policy and toleration, if 
 you will. Regulations may be imposed, as 
 with the saloon. Recognize the existence 
 of gambling as a fixed fact, but interpose 
 a surveillance for the prevention of fraud. 
 As with the saloon, also, provide for the 
 protection of those weaklings who are ever 
 wards of the law; “ minors, drunkards, lu- 
 natics and spendthrifts.” This policy now 
 obtains generally on the continent of Europe, 
 and to a certain extent in several of the 
 United States: notably, Arkansas, Texas 
 and California. 
 
 “What! would you have gambling public?” 
 Yes, rather than private; and that is the 
 
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 227 
 
 alternative presented to the wise. The ex- 
 perience of California, in this matter, is that 
 of every state in the Union, and all may 
 profit by her example. In the words of 
 Judge Murray of that state: “The Legisla- 
 ture, finding a thirst for play universally 
 prevalent throughout the state, and despair- 
 ing of suppressing it entirely, attempted to 
 control it in certain bounds, by imposing 
 restrictions and burdens on this kind of 
 business. The license operated as a permis- 
 sion, and removed, or did away with the 
 misdemeanor as it existed.” d'he issue for 
 practical men is: Shall gambling be in sight 
 and subject to control, or shall it be out of 
 sight and beyond control. The “situs” of 
 public gambling is known to the authorities, 
 and thus may its conduct be supervised and 
 regulated: its every operation may be hourly 
 inspected by the police, to the exclusion of 
 those whom the law may with propriety 
 protect from their own acts, and the preven- 
 tion of cheating by dishonorable methods 
 
228 
 
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 and devices. If gambling is public, in brief, 
 its abuses can be reduced to a minimum. 
 When repressed at known points, gambling 
 is not thereby discontinued. It is thus dis- 
 tributed over a wider field, there, secretly 
 to thrive in its worst features. Then it is 
 that fraud and theft are triumphant: that 
 “brace” gamblers “wax fat” and their 
 conscienceless harpies pray in secret upon 
 the unwary and the inexperienced. Public 
 gambling is generally fair and honest. Secret 
 gambling is too often but another name 
 for a robbery that cannot be prevented 
 by either police or magistrates. Again, 
 the number of employees are few, com- 
 paratively, in the public gambling club, 
 and it is without other allurements than 
 naked chance may offer. Not so the pri- 
 vate institution, the patrons of which may 
 freely partake of most seductive viands 
 and expensive liquors ; rents are also 
 higher, and more employees are required. 
 The private club is costly in the extreme: 
 
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 22Q 
 
 an extravagant scale is necessary to its 
 very existence. This is a severe test to 
 the scruples of a proprietor. In some 
 way he must meet expenses and insure a 
 livelihood. For an honest gambler the 
 maintenance of a private club is seldom 
 possible. 
 
 “ But public, gambling would be a temp- 
 tation to the poor man. You admit that 
 poor men should not gamble?” I answer, 
 who is the “poor” man? When you have 
 found him, who is his keeper? Are you 
 the custodian of his judgment and in- 
 clinations ? I am of opinion he would 
 repudiate your guardianship with indig- 
 nation. “Consistency thou art,” indeed, 
 “ a jewel.” The rich and well-to-do may 
 gamble, perhaps, but not the man of 
 small resources. I ask, who has the 
 right, for that reason, to say the latter nay? 
 Not you, rich gambler in stocks and farm 
 products; nor you, sir, who nightly gamble 
 in the parlor of a comfortable home, 
 
230 
 
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 or at the private club you assist in maintain- 
 ing for that purpose. By what authority 
 were you constituted the keeper of a less 
 fortunate neighbor? All this aside, how- 
 ever, the suppression of public gambling 
 will not deter any man from the pursuit, 
 whether “ rich ” or “ poor.” A thousand 
 avenues are opened to him, despite the 
 law and the authorities. In this matter, 
 society must trust to the education of in- 
 dividual character and the gradual amelior- 
 ation of mankind. Besides, if gambling 
 were subject to regulation, as other pursuits, 
 our laws could the better protect whomso- 
 ever it might desire. 
 

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