250 BETTING AS IT MIGHT BE. 
CHAPTER XXV. 
BETTING AS IT MIGHT BE, 
Suggested remedies : to legalize betting—Restrictions on commissioners—Gentle- 
men recommended three courses: to do their own commissions: to employ 
their equals; or to name and adhere to a price—Suggested alteration in 
system of nomination and entry: a different time of entry; a new mode of 
acceptance ; the proposed method sketched, and the result, betting on the 
nomination—Benefits of the proposal illustrated from the Waterloo Cup ; the 
tipster and tout done away with—Bookmakers and their procedure ; a rever- 
sion to the old tactics recommended—Betting on the Waterloo ‘‘ draw” 
examined ; the one disappointment, Coomassze forestalled, and its warning— 
The criticism of able writers commended and desired. 
ONE of the most effective remedies applied to betting would 
be to legalize it. This would not only influence commis- 
sions, but would extend to cases calling for the law’s restraint 
—to welshers, and to those who, after winning thousands, 
decamp on the first reverse of fortune. If transactions on 
the Stock Exchange are legal, why should it be otherwise 
with those on the turf? Honest men of every grade desire 
they should be; only dishonest men require provision of such 
a nature as to permit non-fulfilment of their engagements 
to the great injury of those that complete them. 
Now, just as the solicitor who wilfully neglects a case that 
he undertakes to conduct, or from incapacity destroys rather 
than assists it, is amenable for such shortcomings ; so it should 
be with a commission agent, who, from any cause save a just 
