392 Insurance and Gambling. [CHAP. xv. 



21. This is the theoretic conclusion. How far the 

 actual practice of gambling introduces counteracting agencies 

 must be left to the determination of those who are com 

 petent to pronounce. So far as outsiders are authorised 

 to judge from what they read in the newspapers and other 

 public sources of information, it would appear that these 

 counteracting agencies are very considerable, and that in 

 consequence it is a rather insecure argument to advance 

 against gambling. Many a large fortune has notoriously 

 been squandered on the race-course or in gambling saloons, 

 and most certainly a large portion, if not the major part, 

 has gone to swell the incomes of many who were by compari 

 son poor. But the solution of this question must clearly be 

 left to those who have better opportunities of knowing 

 the facts than is to be expected on the part of writers on 

 Probability. 



22. The general conclusion to be drawn is that those 

 who invoked this principle of moral fortune as an argument 

 against gambling were really raising a much more intricate 

 and far-reaching problem than they were aware of. What 

 they were at work upon was the question, What is the 

 distribution of wealth which tends to secure the maximum 

 of happiness ? Is this best secured by equality or inequality ? 

 Had they really followed out the doctrine on which their 

 denunciation of gambling was founded they ought to have 

 adopted the Socialist s ideal as being distinctly that which 

 tends to increase happiness. And they ought to have 

 brought under the same disapprobation which they ex 

 pressed against gambling all those tendencies of modern 

 civilized life which work in the same direction. For in 

 stance ; keen competition, speculative operations, extended 

 facilities of credit, mechanical inventions, enlargement of 

 business operations into vast firms : all these, and other 



