Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/434

 Legal Notes on Card-Playing.

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LEGAL NOTES ON CARD-PLAYING. By Norton T. Hokk. THE element of chance has a strong at traction for the legal mind as well as for the layman, and particularly so when it is made a means of gaining something that has not been earned. To a certain extent it necessarily enters into every business undertaking having gain for its object; but as soon as a venture becomes dependent for success upon chance alone, it is a swindle and merits restriction by laws. Games at cards such as faro and vingt-et-un, in which the only skill consists in a correct calculation of the probabilities, are no better as games than throwing dice or matching pennies, and are seldom practised except as excuses for gambling. Whether the games played involve chance alone or chance combined with skill, if no money is wagered on the result, their prac tice is not immoral, and should not be un lawful. Playing-cards were first used in England some six hundred years ago, at a time when England's safety depended upon the physical ability of her subjects in the arts of war. The common people were addicted to out door sports, chiefly wrestling, shooting the cross-bow, and sparring with the quarterstaff. As soon as these manly games began to be neglected for the indoor pastimes of dice and cards, Parliament sought to protect and foster the development of muscle by prohibiting any of the common classes from playing cards or dice at any time except at Christmas. The first law of this nature was enacted in 1496 under Henry VII. The re striction does not seem so harsh when we consider that Christmas in the sense then used extended from November 1, All Hal lows Eve, to the 2d of February, the day after Candlemas. Even during these months artisans, laborers, and servants dared not play except in their masters' houses, or in

their own houses by express license from their masters. This law seems to have been well observed; for one of the favorite writers under Henry VIII. is quoted as saying in the year 1550, that " he did not love to play king and queene but at Christmasse, according to the old order of England; that few men played at cards but at Christmasse, and then almost all, men and boys." However, with the change in the methods of waging war, caused by the general intro duction of gunpowder, the necessity for such laws ceased to exist, and after 1542 they were not re-enacted, and in fact were no longer observed, even in popular custom, after the sixteenth century. The betting at card games soon became so heavy as to need re strictions, having ruined a few prominent courtiers; and in 1679 a law was enacted which forbade cheating at cards, and re stricted the amount which one might law fully lose in any one sitting to one hundred pounds. In 1711 this limit was reduced to ten pounds. For two hundred years or more the play ing-cards used in England were largely im ported from France and Germany, and all cards specially prepared for the use of gamblers in playing dishonest games came from Germany. Cards were there called "briefe," and to this day English gamblers call cards which are marked for gambling purposes " briefs." This may account for the skill frequently displayed by gentlemen of the legal profession in games at cards, they being well schooled in the art of pre paring " briefs " to perplex and circumvent their adversaries. The laws of many of our States do not stop at the punishment of playing for money, but make it unlawful to play at or use cards or any other gambling device in a public place.