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CHAPTER XXIII.

GAMBLING.

Credo. I believe in dice;

Without a penny for the price, Full often have they got me meat, Good wine to drink and friends to treat; And sometimes, too, when luck went worse. They've stripped me clean of robe and purse.

— Bufefeuf.

There needeth not the hell that bigots frame

To punish those who err; earth in itself

Contains at once the evil and the cure;

And all-sutlicing nature can chastise

Those who transgress her law—she only knows

How justly to proportion to the fault

The punishment it merits.

— Shelley.

Johnson. Depend upon it, sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming ? You will not find six instances in an age. There is a strange i-out made about deep play, whereas you have many more people ruined by adventurous trade, and yet we do not hear such an outcry against it.

llirale. There may be few absolutely ruined by deep play, but very many are much hurt in their circumstances by it.

Johnson. Yes, sir, and so are very many by other kinds of expense.



Johnson. It is not roguery to play with a man who is ignorant of the game while you are master of it, and so win his money, for he thinks he can play better than you, as you think you can play better than he, and the superior skill carries it.

Ersldne. He is a fool, but you are not a rogue.

Johnson. That's much about the truth, sir. It must be considered that a man who only does what every one of the society to which he belongs would do, is not a dishonest man.

Boswell. So, then, sir, you do not think ill of a man who wins, perhaps, forty thousand pounds in a winter ?

Johnson. Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man, but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. Trade gives employment to numbers, and so produces intermediate good.

— BoswelVs Johnson.

A PRIMARY principle of ethics is that every individual may freely act his pleasure as long as he does not interfere with the rights of otJi^rs. He may claim for himself every gratification whic