Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/683

Rh legal point of view, and especially wager policies on human life. A century or so ago, wagers, and actions to enforce their payment, were sanctioned by the courts both here and in England, and all sorts of wagers were enforced by law. Thus it was adjudged to be "within the sound policy of the Kingdom" for the Court of Kings Bench to serve as a stakeholder between two persons who had made a bet whether or not another person had bought a wagon of a fourth. Lord Mansfield during the reign of George III, presided at a trial and charged a jury, with becoming gravity, upon the astonishing question, which had been the subject of a wager between the parties to the suit, whether a third person, who wore the clothes and bore the name of a man, was a male or a female. The jury found that it was a woman. Subsequently, however, his lordship upon a hearing before the whole bench, had the grace to say: "This case made a great noise all over Europe; and soon afterwards, I own, I was sorry."

Still later came the famous litigation which the English courts entertained over what were known as the Napoleon wagers, mere bets that Bonaparte would or would not die within a certain time, or would or would not escape from St. Helena, within a given time. In the infancy of life insurance, wager policies on human life were held lawful, but come now, like all other wagers, under what we are bound to regard the wholesome ban of our present public policy.

While non-commercial wagers of every sort have, in the process of time, become illegal, and are now so declared by statute in perhaps every civilized community, it is another curious illustration of the way in which freedom of trade asserts itself in these days that, pari passu with the decline in respect of legal sanction of mere wagers, dealings in futures which are of course a form of wager, have become more and more legal and are now substantially lawful in all enlightened communities. It will certainly be but a short time until they will have the same