to another occurs precisely as it does by theft. But the loser of a bet has consented in advance to his loss, while the loser by a theft has not; and this important difference of circumstance is supposed by many people to cleanse the betting transaction of all wrong. But does it? What is a bet but an agreement between two persons that one shall be allowed to despoil the other of a given sum of money, and

Betting and gambling.

that some uncertain or chance happening—in a horse-race or a game of cards, perhaps

shall decide which is to be the despoiler and which the despoiled? The loser has consented in advance to submit to the spoliation but why? Simply because he hoped and felt sure that the spoil would come to

himself. The motive of the bet on both sides was that hope, which is plainly as immoral, as contrary to Right, as any motive in human conduct can be. The loser makes no gift of the money he has lost; he yields it under the compulsion of ill-luck. If he had yielded it to the compulsion of a pistol the real nature of his loss would have been the same ; but he himself, in that case, would have had no partnership in the wrong-doing of the affair. As it is, he has made himself accessory to the Wrong, which does not better it in the moral view.

If this is rightly reasoned (and where is there a flaw in the reasoning?), it condemns all gaming for money; but it goes much farther than that. A

deplorably large part of what goes by the name of "business" in the world has acquired the nature of betting, Betting and simply that and nothing else. Instead of actually buying

gambling in

business.

and selling such commodities as corn and pork, or such pieces of property as the shares of a railroad, men stake money on the chances of a future rise or fall in the prices of such things. It is called "speculation;" but it is the speculation of gambling, not speculation in trade. It has nothing to do with trade. It connects itself in no way with the producing or the exchanging of things. Those who engage in it are entirely outside of all the movements of useful industry and real trade, standing as onlookers to watch them and to bet

with each other on the future course those movements will take, doing what they can, meantime, to disturb the natural market by falsifying reports and exciting cries. Such so-called "business "bears no resemblance to the useful busying which the word properly implies; and yet the two are much confused in the common notions of "business" that now prevail. A clear distinction between them needs to be drawn; and a still clearer distinction between equitable gains derived from the beneficial commerce of mankind, and the predatory gains which one may get by making another lose.

Speculation in actual trade is something very different from this. It is an exercise of foresight, calculation, know

ledge, which enters more or less into all commercial dealing, and its rightness depends on the care that

Speculative trade.

is taken to harm no others. It is manifestly Right that one who carefully cultivates and uses his intelligence to some serviceable end should have the benefit of an advantage over those who do not; and this can come to him in trade with no loss to others, whose benefit is merely less, and justly less, than his own. He is bound by the great Rule of Right to use any advantage he may happen to possess, whether of strength in his body, or of energy in his spirit, or of capability in his mind, with careful consideration for his fellow men. That marks a limit which each must find for himself.