378 Insurance and Gambling. [CHAP. xv. 



influence of a wish to emphasize the excitement of loss 

 and gain. 



I would not for a moment underrate the practical dangers 

 which are found to attend the practice of gambling. It 

 is remarked that the gambler, if he continues to play for a 

 long time, is under an almost irresistible impulse to increase 

 his stakes, and so re-introduce the element of uncertainty. 

 It is in fact this tendency to be thus led on, which makes 

 the principal danger and mischief of the practice. Risk and 

 uncertainty are still such normal characteristics of even civi 

 lized life, that the mere extension of such tendencies into 

 new fields does not in itself offer any very alarming pros 

 pect. It is only to be deprecated in so far as there is a 

 danger, which experience shows to be no trifling one, that 

 the fascination found in the pursuit should lead men into 

 following it up into excessive lengths 1 . 



8. The above general treatment of Gambling and 

 Insurance seems to me the only rational and sound prin 

 ciple of division ; namely, that on which the different prac 

 tices which, under various names, are known as gambling 

 or insurance, are arranged in accordance with the spirit of 

 which they are the outcome, and therefore of the results 

 which they are designed to secure. If we were to attempt 



1 One of the best discussions that sum-total of what they distribute in 

 I have recently seen on these sub- prizes is less than that of what they 

 jects, by a writer at once thoroughly receive in payments. The difference, 

 competent and well informed, is in in respect of information deliberate- 

 Mr Proctor s Chance and Luck. It ly withheld and false reports wilfully 

 appears to me however that he runs spread, between most of the lotteries 

 into an extreme in his denunciation that have been supported, and the 

 not of the folly but of the dishonesty bubble companies which justly de- 

 of all gambling. Surely also it is a serve the name of swindles, ought to 

 strained use of language to speak of prevent the same name being applied 

 all lotteries as unfair and even to both, 

 swindling on the ground that the 



