3o8 THE COACHING AGE. 



and grinding our already debased peasantry to the 

 very extreme of misery, inducing the increase of 

 atrocious crime to a most fearful extent. 



' That your petitioner would also show that these 

 monster establishments render anything like competi- 

 tion impossible, and create a monopoly which, under 

 any circumstances and in any form, is, has been, and 

 ever will be, inimical to the best interests of the 

 community. 



' That your petitioner witnesses the investment of 

 such capital in a financial point of view by individuals 

 in certain trunk lines as being beneficial as well to the 

 country as to the shareholders, inasmuch as they (the 

 latter) get good interest for their money, and are 

 thereby enabled in some measure to counteract the 

 evil they have produced ; while others, many of them — 

 some that have passed and others now before your 

 Honourable Housed — originating in false premises, and 

 projected by artful and designing men, are calculated 

 to, give rise to a spirit of gambling, successful for a 

 while, but which must ultimately involve, if they 

 have not already done so, the ruin of thousands who 

 have, under some specious pretexts, consented to 

 become their dupes, such systematic adventurous 

 schemes being derogatory to the national character, 

 subversive of that safe and . healthy state which 

 the monetary transactions of a great commercial 



