COL. GEORGE WASHINGTON FLOWERS 
 MEMORIAL COLLECTION 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 DURHAM. N. C. 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 W. W. FLOWERS 
 
CONTROVERSY 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 h i ujr ■:» 4J Mr 1 1^T 1^^ 9 9 A "mr i 'k ^ ^ 
 
 KRSKIJVJK" AND "W. M." 
 
 ON THE 
 
 practioabijl.it Y 
 
 Of 
 
 SUPPKKSSINa G^VMBLING- 
 
 KlcHMOiM): 
 
 TRINTEU AT Tin. WIIM; hook AM) JOn CKFICL. 
 
 1862. 
 
^^if. 
 
 a 
 
 r-tr-rr^f':^ PREFACE. 
 ^ 1 1> H 
 
 Tlie within articles were originally published (except ^'Ers- 
 kine's" last) in the Richmond Whig; and wiien application was 
 made to ^^Erskine" to consent to their re-publication in this 
 form he put his consent upon the condition that he was to be 
 permitted to answer ^'W. M.'s" last article and to revise and 
 correct whatever inaccuracies which may, through the despatch 
 with which his articles wore furnished to the press, have crept 
 into them. 
 
 •I ■ "^ •■ * 
 
 u.iers alike ol opniion and of feeling u. 
 
 ^nance, and as longas "grass grows and water tlowo 
 . rt^ill forever be. That this conclusion is correct, I will fur- 
 .ish two reasons, either of \vhich will be found unanswerable: 
 First, its popularity in high circles. Henry Clay and S. S. 
 Prentiss, were in their day and generation inveterate gamblers, 
 so were Charles James Fov and Kichard Brinsley Sheridan, and 
 among the men who occupy the relationship to this age they did 
 to theirs, in social and political prominence, you will find those 
 who are equally as fond of cards, and human nature is the same 
 to-day that it was two hundred years ago, when the mighty 
 bard of Avon made Brutus say: 
 
 " The name of Cassius honors this corruption, 
 And cbastiseraent doth therefore hide its head," 
 
 8387 
 
CONTROYEHSY. 
 
 CAN GAMBLING BE SUPPRESSED^ 
 
 To the Editor of the Whi<r: 
 
 The prominence given to the above subject at this time, by 
 the anthorities and the press of tliis city, will furnish, T trust, a 
 snfficient excuse for the tnrther intrusion upon the attention of 
 the pubh'c, and more especially upon the attention of the Legis- 
 lature, of sundry suggestions upon it. That gambling is a vice 
 of no ordinary magnitude, professional gamblers themselves do 
 not pretend to deny, that it should be promptly, utterly and 
 eternally suppressed, will be universally admitted. Tiiat its 
 suppression however is a moral, legal and literal impossibility, 
 is equally insusceptible of dispute. 
 
 In no age of the world has gambling ever had a puhlic advo- 
 cate, or lacked pri\^ate votaries. From time immemorial, it has 
 been among the nabobs of every land, t^ie magnates of every 
 realm a popular past-time. Its origin is hoary with age. Before 
 the flood Chance was a God at whose altar millions worshipped, 
 and millions throng his temples to-day. Read the 23d, 24th, 
 25th and 26th verses of the first chapter of the Acts and you 
 will find that when Barsabas and Matthias found that they were 
 rival aspirants for a vacant apostleship, that they resolved to 
 gamble for it, and that IMatthias won it, and from that day to 
 this, there has been a gradually growing propensity among men 
 to submit matters alike of opinion and of feeling to the arbitra- 
 ment of chance, and as long as '^ grass grows and water flows," 
 so it will forever be. That this conclusion is correct, I will fur- 
 nish two reasons, either of Avhich will be found unanswerable: 
 First, its popularity in high circles. Henry Clay and S. S. 
 Prentiss, were in their day and generation inveterate gamblers, 
 so were Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and 
 among the men who occupy the relationship to this age they did 
 to theirs, in social and political prominence, jou will find those 
 who are equally as fond of cards, and human nature is the same 
 to-day that it was two htmdred years ago, when the mighty 
 bard of Avon made Brutus say: 
 
 " The name of C&ssius honors this corruption, 
 Aod chastisement doth therefore hide its bead." 
 
 ^ jL 
 
 8387 
 
One of the prerogatives of fame, is impunity for small vices. 
 and all vices are small when the culprit is socially popular and 
 intellectually great. Ministers may preach against gambling; 
 essayists write against it; orators thunder against it; poetr. sing 
 against it; mothers pray against it, and law makers legislate 
 against it; hut unite all of these A'-ast resources of multiform 
 power, and then throw in the gates of Hell, and altogether, they 
 never can prevail against it. W/ieii and where u-as g-ambling 
 ever pvt downl Who did it, and how did they doit? If it 
 could be done at all, of course, it could be done only by law. 
 ]jaw is said to be the perfection of human reason, whereas, 
 gambling is the legitimate offspring of passion, and when and 
 where did reason ever successfully cope with passion? It may 
 be said that there is a higlier law^ known as public opinion, 
 more formidable in the suppression of vices than even the statute 
 law. I admit the potency of public opinion, but ])ublic opinion 
 is more emphatically expressed by the conduct than by the lan- 
 guage of men, and, unfortunately, public opinion, as thus em« 
 phatically declared, is overwhelmingly in favor of gambling. 
 
 " 'Tis true, 'tis pity, pity 'tis, 'lis true." 
 
 The second reason which stands in open opposition to the 
 suppression of gambling is, the aspect in which a law, inhibiting 
 it, is regarded by the masses. They feel that their money is 
 their own, and that they have the same natural, and ought to 
 have the same legal right, to invest it as they please, as is ac- 
 corded, by the law, to the tobacco, cotton or calico gambler; for, 
 they say, the man that speculates in cotton, tobacco, calico, or 
 anything else, is staking his money at a risk upon a chance, and 
 is, to all intents and purposes, literally a gambler; and the only 
 answer Arhich can be given to this argument, is, they are neither 
 .so called or regarded. That is true, but not a whit truer than 
 that they are, nevertheless, above and beyond all denial, gam- 
 blers — often reckless gamblers. I do not employ the term in its 
 technical, but its literal sense; and, between a fair game of faro 
 and a sharp trade in cotton, there exists but one striking differ- 
 ence. In the cotton operation, ten thousand words are inter- 
 changed, and it is rarely ever the case that ten Ihousajid words 
 are interchanged, without the direct, sometimes iiniocent, at 
 other times malignant, infliction of more or less damage upon 
 the truth. Whereas, at faro, not a word is spoken — if you win, 
 you do not have to lie to do it, and if you lose your last dollar, 
 you can then quote the message of Francis the First, to his 
 mother: ''All is lost save honor." 
 
 Gambling is a source, never failing source, of excitement. 
 jLxcitement men must have, It is as necessary to their happi-. 
 
iiess as atmosphere is to their existence. Every man Hving is 
 to sonic extent and in some form an enthnsiast. Some are af- 
 fected with a passion for one thing, some for another. Sculpture, 
 painting, music, meclianism, metaphysics, mesmerism, astro- 
 nomy, anatomy, geology, botany, chemistry, eloquence, poetry — 
 all have their votaries. Their favorite passion is a hobby on 
 which the '• pent up Utica" of their feelings can take a morning 
 or an evening ride and get an airing. Now, suppose a man 
 does not happen to be blessed with an elaborately cultivated in- 
 tellect, or a naturally refined taste, what interest can he find in 
 one of Ilaphaeris cartoons, Canova's busts, Homer's poems or 
 Cicero's orations? Yet may he not be afl^ected with the same 
 irrepressible passion, the same burning tiiirst ibr excitement that 
 makes enthusiasts of other men? Certainly he may, and when 
 we look around us in the world, we find that out of every hun- 
 dred men in it, ninety-nine of them have cultivated a card en- 
 thusiasm; and any law which strikes at the fullest and freest 
 fruition of a pet passion of tli^e million is bound to arouse the 
 combative propensities of the masses, and they will eternally 
 thwart and foil its execution. They can do it and they will. 
 Every law is bound to be u dead letter when the resolute ener- 
 gies of an active people are arrayed in open hostility against it, 
 and they always will be arrayed against any law which they 
 either feel or conceive abridges their personal rights and privi- 
 leges, or discriminates against tliem in favor of higher and more 
 cultiv^ated classes of society. 
 
 They say we do not object that this man shall know the 
 "local habitation and the name" of every '-'bright particular 
 star" in Heaven, and worship them all if he wants to, or that 
 that one shall have a bed of roses on which to sleep and dream 
 of fiowcrs that never fade. We are willing that the lovers of 
 music shall have a perpetual '' concord of sweet sounds" to 
 serenade them, and that the lovers of eloquence may imagine if 
 they please that, even at this late day, they can distinctly hear 
 the dying reverberations of the mighty thunders that burst, 
 thousands of years ago, from the lips of Demosthenes. We care 
 not how mad your literary or scientific enthusiasts run, nor how 
 furiously they ride their hobbies. All we ask is, that when wc 
 want to mount ours they shall not be unceremoniously taken 
 from us and impounded. It is idle, then, to talk about suppress- 
 ing gambling. You might as well think of storming Fortress 
 Monroe with a pop-gun, or closing up the crater of Mount Ve- 
 suvius with a cobweb. The men who pass laws against it will 
 themselves violate the laws they enact, and the men you may 
 appoint to execute the said laws to-day were, in all probability, 
 bucking the "Tiger" yesterday; and if they do notdo it to-day 
 with their coinraissions in their pocket, will, if they are al all 
 
 218387 
 
8 
 
 given to scruples of conscience, lay down their commissions to 
 hunt the jungle of the spotted varmint to-morrow. Under such 
 circumstances, what is the best thing we can do? I answer, if 
 we cannot put it down, let us diminish it as much as possible, 
 and relieve it of all the odium it may be in our power to remove 
 from it. As a nation we are in our infancy. The old United 
 States was but in its swaddling garments when we tore away 
 from it and tore away the best portion of its clothes. Its history 
 furnishes no lesson from the study of which we can profit^ in an 
 effort to suppress any description of vice. We will have, then, 
 to make a trip across the ocean and look into the history of older 
 governments, and study the operation of their laws against 
 gambling. For over a thousand years legislation- against it was 
 tried in vain in Europe. Within the last fifty years, however, 
 legislation has taken it under its protection there, and the result 
 is favorable to its diminution. In Germany and France gambhng 
 is legalized, and gambling-houses are licensed and regulated by 
 law, and the result is that they .are a source of revenue to the 
 government, are conducted with propriety and integrity, and 
 that there is not as nuich gambling as there was when they were 
 conducted secretly against the law. Let, then, our Legislature 
 pass an act licensing gambling, and fix the license at a IdgJi 
 figure. 
 
 Let the law require that every applicant for a license shall give 
 bond, in the sum of fifty thousand dollars, for the honest and 
 upright management of his establishment, and the prompt pay- 
 ment of all its losses. Then make all manner of cheating at all 
 manner of games, felonies, and when the keeper of a gaming 
 house is convicted of a violation of this law, make the penalty a 
 forfeiture of his bond, and ten years' imprisonment at hard labor 
 in the Penitentiary. Then make it felony for any man to either 
 keep, or frequent, and bet in an unlicensed gaming house. Who 
 can be found then reckless enough to visit such a house, with 
 the hungry jaws of the State ju-ison yawning upon him, when 
 he can enjoy precisely the same privilege under the sheltering 
 wing of the law? The total abolition of all small gambling 
 houses, will be the innndiate and inevitable result. 
 
 Three reasons can be given to justify this conclusion. In the 
 first place, not more than one gambler in fifty can give the bond. 
 Secondly, nobody Avill patronize an unlicensed house j and, 
 if they attempt to do it, the law against it can and will be en- 
 forced. The prejudices of the public will be aroused against 
 ■any man who will seek to evade a compliance Avitli the law, that 
 lias for its object the regulation of his honesty, and they will 
 feel that his object was to cheat, swindle, defraud and rob the 
 public, and that he richly deserves to be branded as a felon, and 
 locked up in the State prison. As the law now stands, a mau 
 
can swindle yon ont of your last dollar at cards and then tell 
 you that you are a sucker, and langh in your face with impu- 
 nity. Make it a felony to cheat at cards, and you will abolish 
 half the games that are played, and drive men, who now live by 
 cheating and swindling, into honorable avocations. 
 
 Put down small gaming houses, and you will achieve a SoH'c- 
 rino victory over gaming itself. It is in these small establish- 
 ments youths are initiated and old suckers robbed. They have 
 their stool pigeons and decoy-ducks, drummers and pimps, like 
 so many spies, Itu'king, sitting, standing, sneaking and swelling 
 through the highways and the byways, the street corners, the 
 bar-rooms and hotel parlors of the city. They are clothed and 
 fed to hunt down strangers and inveigle them into their dens, 
 where they 7iiaij lose but cannot win. Men who have means 
 and character enough to give a bond such as 1 have mentioned, 
 Avill never resort to such low, dirty and rascally appliances to get 
 custom. They will leave the bettor to obey the impulses of his 
 own volition, and his own volition alone. Then, again, when 
 you license such establishments, you draw aside the veil of se- 
 crecy, and make it an open show and a free fight. Every man, 
 then, who visits these establishments may become a witness to 
 prove the violation of any provisions of the law regulating them, 
 and intended for the protection of the public, without being ex- 
 posed himself to a prosecution, and, in effect, it will raise up 
 thousands of seiUinels to watch and superintend the manage- 
 ment of these establishments, whereas now they are without a 
 solitary monitor. In the next place, it will enable a landlord to 
 enforce decorum on his premises, which he is now not always 
 able to do, lest the vagabond whom he may eject t(vday from 
 his premises may become an informer to-morrow. And in the 
 third place, it will shell out the puritanical hypocrites who pray 
 in public but now bet in secret. Riui up the curtain, however, 
 and "nary" another Aminadab Sleek will you ever hear groan- 
 ing under the paws of the royal Bengal. Then, again, when 
 men go to gaming houses now, they have to wait until the 
 shades of night overlay the earth, or slink in and ont at the back 
 door; and I maintain that it is radically wrong to force free-born 
 and high-spirited men to the desperate extremity of doing that 
 which is bound to involve the humiliation of personal dignity, 
 and the consciousness of more or less personal degradation. 
 The results never can be salutary. Is it suspected that the au- 
 thor of the foregoing thoughts is himself a gambler? He is not. 
 He never betted a dime in his life on faro, roulette, or any of 
 those games, and the hints he has given above are as free from 
 interest on the one hand as they are from prejudice on the other. 
 
 ERSKINE. 
 
10 
 
 CAN GAMBLING BE SUPPRESSED? 
 
 To the Editor of the Whig: 
 
 A communication, by '^Erskine," with the above heading, 
 which appeared in your issue of December 7th, has filled me, 
 as I doubt not it has the minds of many of your readers, with 
 sorrow. Whatever the object of the writer may have been, the 
 article will not serve any other purpose than that of palliating 
 the vice of gambling — a vice, as the author of the communica- 
 tion confesses, "of no ordinary magnitude." He wishes to see 
 gambling promptly and finally suppressed, and what means does 
 he use to further this important result? He uses scarcely any 
 language but what will inevitably serve to encourage those who 
 commit this vice to prosecute their ruinous career. He cites, for 
 their gratification, what he alleges are Scriptural and Apostolical 
 examples. He tells them that "^'before the flood," Chance was 
 a god at whose altar millions worshipped, and that when Barsa- 
 bas and Matthias, as recorded in the first chapter of the Acts of 
 the Apostles, found themselves rival aspirants for a vacant Apos- 
 tleship, "they resolved to gamble for it, and that Matthias won 
 it." Now, to say nothing of the unhappy manner in which the 
 latter part of the extract was penned, let me ask "Erskine" 
 where he found out that any species of gambling prevailed be- 
 fore the flood? Who or what is his authority for the statement? 
 The Bible says nothing on the subject, never mentions a single 
 individual of that period as having anything to do with games 
 of chance. If the Bible is silent on the subject, one is entirely 
 at a loss to know whence the writer of this article got his infor- 
 mation, for there is no other authentic history of the Antidelu- 
 vian era, or, indeed, any history at all. If the assertion could 
 have been proven, and the fact established, the period was cer- 
 tainly a most unfortunate one to reter to, for "Erskine," who 
 admits die immorality of gambling, might very readily have re- 
 men. bered that it was on account of the vices of the men of that 
 time that the flood came and swept them away. Who informed 
 the author of the communication in question that Barsabas and 
 Matthias were "rival aspirants" for the vacant Aposfleship/ 
 The account in Acts, which he quotes, says nothing of their 
 being "aspirants" to the office, says nothing of their being 
 rivals, or desiring the position at all. What is the authority for 
 saying that they resolved to gamble for it? The account does 
 not state that they had anything to do with what was done on 
 the occasion. It does not inform us that these two Disciples 
 were even present at the time referred to. What does he get his 
 information from? If he had examined the narrative, instead of 
 trusting to some vague recollection of it, as he seems to have 
 done, he would have seen that the lot was east by others. It 
 
11 
 
 is evident, from the language, that these two Disciples had 
 nought to do with the act which elevated them to office. They 
 did not gamble for the position, nor did anybody gamble on the 
 occasion, as can be shown by a most simple illustration. Wlien 
 a landed estate is to be divided between (say) three heirs, and 
 into three equal parts, it is a most common thing lor three tickets, 
 representing these three portions, to be placed in a common re- 
 ceptacle, and each heir draws out one of those tickets, and takes 
 the part of ihe land designated by the ticket. This is the mo- 
 dern lot, and corresponds to the ancient lot, in principle, such 
 as was used by the Apostles in the selection of one to fill the 
 vacancy occasioned bj'' the Apostacy and death of Judas, and 
 by the Roman soldiers as to who should have the seamless coat 
 of the crucified Jesus. There was no gambling in tlie case, no 
 property of one man passing to the hands of another npon a turn 
 of a die, without any equivalent — the circumstance, and almost 
 alone circumstance, which constitutes the essence and vice of 
 gambling. 
 
 In further illustration of his idea that gambling will go on, 
 this writer informs ns of the '' popularity of this practice in high 
 circles," arguing from this circumstance that the evil has too 
 strong a position to be overthrown. The gentleman might 
 as well have argued the same thing in respect to other evil 
 courses. Mr. Clay and S. S. Prentiss, he tells us, gambled 
 freely, and so did Charles James Fox, and Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan. All of which is true, and some of these men were 
 guilty of other vices also. Mr. Prentiss not only gambled, but 
 was notoriously a dissipated, drinking man, who died before his 
 time, from his excesses. Mr. Fox not only gambled, but kept 
 a mistress, was a rake generally, wore his shirt-bosom all open 
 in a very vulgar, indecent way, and was rarely, as Mr. H. Wal- 
 pole tells ns. purified by ablutions. Were all these things po- 
 pular in high circles? Did the fact that Mr. Fox committed 
 these things prove that they were popular in high circles? Mr. 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan not only was a most reckless game- 
 ster, but lie habitually dnmk himself to the most beastly intoxi- 
 cation, and was drowned in debt, and hunted by sherifts, and 
 trusted by no one, and died man-forsaken, and God-forsaken, 
 and was found dead in a room, not a fit habitation for swine. 
 Were all these things popular in high circles, because Mr. She- 
 ridan who committed them, was^ on account of his brilliant ta- 
 lents, admitted to the best society? Is it the sober truth in the 
 case, iMr. Edited, that, 
 
 " The name of Cussius honors this corruption .'" 
 
 Or does the corruption dishonor the name of Cassius? Did 
 Charles James Fox enjoy the high moral position of William 
 
12 
 
 Pitt who never gambled, and nearly always had Mr. Fox ''sub 
 pollice?'' Did poor Sheridan, the very sight of whom, we sup- 
 pose, reminded men of cards, ever occupy the eminence and 
 have the influence of Wilberforce, or George Canning? These 
 men certainly did not attain the weight they would have se- 
 cured, if they had been free from this vice, and the corruption 
 surely dishonored "the name of Cassius." The names of the 
 prominent persons mentioned by the writer of the article under 
 consideration did not, could not give dignity or innocence to the 
 practice in question, and there is nothing in the fact that these 
 men were guilty of this vice, to show that this practice cannot ' 
 be successfully opposed, or will continue to be committed with 
 no important diminution, as long "as grass grows, and water 
 flows." The argument, to my mind, sir, is wholly destitute of 
 force, or even plausibility. 
 
 "Erskine" asks, in itahcs, "when and where was gambling 
 ever put down?" If the gentleman had familiarized himself 
 with the history of gaming, he would have known that the pub- 
 lic opinion, of which he speaks slightingly, as rather inclining to 
 the other side, fias put an end to female gambling for money. 
 This practice on the part of females is now very rare, not un- 
 blushingly committed as it was in the seventeenth century, when 
 it called forth the elegant satire of Joseph Addison, This was 
 no small triumph. But 1 must ask, when was robbery ever 
 put down thoroughly, or intemperance, or fraud, or slandering, 
 or murder? Shall no true-hearted lover of his kiiid ^nd country, 
 especially in this infancy of our Confederacy, when all ought to 
 be endeavoring to give a proper mould to its laws and its virtue, 
 shall no virtuous patriot exert himself to put down any vice, be- 
 cause it has not been successfully warred against in days that 
 are gone? Shall you, Mr. Editor, forego your laudable eiforts 
 to give form and color to the destinies of the young Republic, 
 because evils have always existed in free governments? If this 
 argument were fairly carried out would it not strike a death- 
 blow at all reformatory legislation whatsoever? 
 
 But men will not tolerate a law forbidding gambling with cards 
 when the gambling of trade is allowed and protected. This is 
 another argument. It almost carries its refutation on its face, 
 from the simple fact that trade lacks the essential feature which 
 constitutes gambling. There is no gaining your neighbor's 
 goods, without giving him an equivalent. You part with goods, 
 and get money. There is merely in the transaction a calculation 
 of probabilities and the laws of trade, which the most compre- 
 hensive mind makes by. If a man deceives his neighbor, of 
 course it is a mere case of fraud. But there is no such thing in 
 the case as two men meeting in a room, and one, after the manage- 
 ment of some pieces of paper^ carrying oif the money of the 
 
13 
 
 other, without giving him one cent's equivalent. Of course 
 there is exchange or trade cannot exist; but in gambhng nothing 
 is given, while the other is deprived of everything. The want 
 of parallelism, between the two cases, is almost too palpable to 
 allow of discussion. This writer is, of course, no gambler, as 
 he tells us so; but he has certainly taken up this plausibility, so 
 often heard among the advocates of this practice, without be- 
 stowing on it the anajysis which he is evidently capable of giv- 
 ing it. I commend his argument on this point to his reexami- 
 nation. 
 
 The more I read this article, Mr. Editor, the more I am struck 
 with its want of logical coherence and force. "^ Excitement men 
 must have," he tells us, and because the minds of men, in ac- 
 cordance with a law of their nature, love and cultivate innocent 
 enthusiasm in the line of sculpture, painting, music, astronomy, 
 poetry, eloquence, etc., therefore, no attempt to curb the indul- 
 gence of a guilty and pernicious passion like that of gaming can 
 be expected to be successful. Could any reasoning possibly be 
 more unsound? Ninety-nine men out of every hundred, he in- 
 forms us, have cultivated ^' a card enthusiasm," and it is "a 
 pet passion of the million." Now, if by "card enthusiasm," 
 he means a passion for gambling for money; and, by the subse- 
 quent language, that gaming for the purposes of gain is "a pet 
 passion of the milhon," I must be permitted to doubt the cor- 
 rectness of this estimate of the proportion such persons bear to 
 the conununity. The present writer has never lived or visited 
 in a community in Virginia, or heard authentically of one, where 
 the proportion of gamesters was greater than that of ten to a 
 hundred, if it was that even. I do not think that there is a 
 neighborhood of gentlemen in Virginia where they would not 
 deem it an insult to have it said of them that ninety-nine out of 
 a hundred of them had cultivated a passion for cards, or, in other 
 words, played cards for money, for we are talking of this, and 
 nothing else. Because of the wide prevalence of this practice, 
 this writer infers that ^^any law which strikes at the fullest frui- 
 tion of this pet passion" will be incessantly thwarted and foiled 
 in its execution. Men, he says, '<can do it and they will." 
 This is his position, and yet he winds up his article by recom- 
 mending a law forbidding gambling, except in certain legalized 
 establishments. Would not a law oi this sort strike at the fullest 
 and freest fruition of this passion? If a man must walk or ride, 
 say three miles in a city, to reach a lawful gambling house, and 
 cannot game elsewhere on penalty of going to the penitentiary, 
 or paying a heavy fine, is this no strike at the freest fruition ol 
 his passion, and if it is, as it certainly is, how, according to this 
 writer, can his own law be carried out? There is a singular 
 want of logic liere, and yet not a more singular one than that 
 
14, 
 
 exhibited in the proposition which it would seem to be the ob- 
 ject of the communication to make, viz: that certain '^gambhng 
 houses" be licensed, with heavy penalties, ifcc, to those who 
 game elsewhere. 
 
 Let us examine this briefly, and then close this long article. 
 We must legalize gambling, as the French and Germans, with 
 their notorionsly low moral tone, have done. We must legalize 
 it, as these two infidel nations of Europe have done, for they 
 are, perhaps, the only two distinctively infidel countries on that 
 continent, and we, in the youth of our nation, or rather infancy, 
 must begin by imitating them. We must follow France, stand- 
 ing as she does on the thin crust of a social volcano, and Ger- 
 many, the confessed fountain of modern infidelity in religion 
 and morals. By way of giving a healthful moral impetus to the 
 conscience of tlie young nation, we must walk in these illus- 
 trious footsteps. We must legalize "a vice of no ordinary mag- 
 nitude," until our fame as gamblers rise out of obscurity, into 
 world-wide notoriety, as these French and Germans have emerged 
 to their bad eminence. If the writer of this proposition had 
 wanted to encumber it with odium, he could not, perhaps, have 
 adopted a more effectual method of doing so, than by telling the 
 readers of the Whig that this law he recommends is a law in 
 Germany and a law in France. 
 
 We must "^legalize gambling." We forbid murder, robbery, 
 slander, drunketniess, profane swearing, fraud and other vices, 
 but perhaps we have made a terrible mistake all this while. 
 Certain houses ought to have been regularly qualified by law, 
 in which these crimes could have been committed with legal 
 sanction, and money, too, accrue to the municipal authorities 
 from the proprietors of these establishments. Is not this, Mr. 
 Editor, the first time, in the history of this vice in this country, 
 that it has been proposed to diminish it by making it absolutely 
 a lawful act? Would it not relieve this practice of at least nine- 
 tenths of its odium? Who that reflects a single moment can 
 doubt this? And who that loves 'this nation would not tremble 
 to see this vice taken under the protection of her laws and go- 
 vernors? Let this thing be done, sir, and steel does not more 
 surely draw the lightning of the skies, than would such an act 
 attract the wrathful curse of the Lord Jehovah. 
 
 This writer believes that, if his proposal was adopted, and 
 gambling in unlicensed houses made a felony, the vice would 
 be diminished, and free-born, high-spirited men would no longer 
 be compelled to " slink in and out," by night, at the back doors 
 of gaming houses. Tins whole proposition, Mr. Editor, is very 
 summarily, but logically, disposed of. These men, who thus 
 furtively frequent gaming places, do not "^shnk out and in," 
 because these house? are' unlicensed houses; but principally for 
 
15 
 
 the reason that they are "gaming ho'iises."' They do not want 
 to be recognized as gamesters, because it is a disrepntable thing. 
 And, although to legahze gaming liouses would take away a 
 large share of the odium whicli adheres to tliis practice, still any 
 person who should gamble, and at tlie same time have a sensi- 
 tive regard to his reputation generally, and as a sate business 
 man niore particularly, would j^et enter these lawful gaming 
 honses with a stealthy tread, and that after the shades of nio-llt 
 have fallen on the earth. Make unlicensed gaming a felony, 
 and you Avill prevent men from daring to have im/ice7ised gmmn»' 
 honses. This will deter men from keeping such houses, he tells 
 us, and thus you will diminish gambling. This admission, Mr. 
 Editor, causes the whole proposal to dwindle into nothing, and 
 vanish like vapor before the sun. 
 
 1 take my leave of the sul)ject, simply remarking, that if men 
 would be deterred from keeping unlicensed gaming houses, by 
 fear of the penalty allached to a felony, they would be deterred 
 trom keeping any gaming estabhshments at all, if the act was 
 by law a felony, to be followed, of course, by its appropriate 
 punishment. 
 
 Buchanan, Botetourt County, Va. W. M. 
 
 To the Whig's Correspondent W. M.:' 
 Lord Byron it was, I believe, who said, sir, 
 
 " A man must serve his time to every trade 
 Save censure — critics are already made;" 
 
 and after having given to your attempt at a reply in the Whig of 
 Thursday, to my article on the suppression of gambling, in the 
 Whig of the Tth ultimo, an attentive and disjKik-ionate^penisal, 
 T regret that [ am not able to resist the involuntary concluslori 
 that your brain is pregnant with the idea that you are ordained 
 from on high, to be one of the "ready made"— that it is not to 
 moral reformation, but to an immoral, because a vain glorious 
 pedantry to which you have dedicated your facile ppu— that 
 you had rather shine temporarily as a superficial reviewer, than 
 to toil quietly in the moral vinyard as a substantial reformer, 
 and I do sincerely regret that talents such as yours should fall 
 under the bliglit of such a conceit. Why, sir, gambling itself is 
 not more utterly destructive of all those finer sensibdiiies in- 
 digenous to the genial regions of a generous bosom, than is this 
 self same ill natured pro|)ensity f>^r carping criticism. A liltlo 
 ephemeral reputation itiiiay gain for yon, 
 
 " But o<li ! it hardens a' within 
 And perlifieb the feeling!" 
 
^6 
 
 ^ The man of genius who descends to it^ mu^t, sooner or later, 
 dwindle into a mere 
 
 " Snapper up of unconsidered trifles." 
 
 Fastidious quibbling and cavelling, never can facilitate moral 
 reformation. When a material fact is stated in a controversy, 
 the disputant asserting it is always expected to be ready with his 
 proof to establish it whenever it is traversed, but as it is beneath 
 the dignity of argument and at war with the policy of logic, to 
 fret over immaterial issues, it is but rarely you will ever find a 
 veteran polemic guilty of that blunder, and when you, sir, 
 called on me for the proof that men did gamble before the flood, 
 I saw in a twinkling, that you belonged to that restive class of 
 writers 
 
 '• Who had rather on a gibbet dangle, 
 Than miss their dear delight to wrangle." 
 
 What boots it, sir, whether gambling had its origin prior or 
 subsequent to the deluge, when it is bound to be admitted by 
 yourself that its origin is of immemorial antiquity. You dis- 
 tract attention here from the iniquity of the vice, which is of 
 vast moment, and attract it to the date of its origin, which is of 
 trivial consequence, wherein you remind one of that great 
 stickler for style, who, it was once said, by a celebrated SoiUh- 
 ern Statesman, would, to round a period, d — n his grandmother; 
 when you are luxuriating in a pet propensity, you are reckless 
 of the moral consequences. You point to the flood, however, 
 and call for my proof. Welt, you shall have it. As a matter of 
 course, you will not expect me to produce upon the stand a 
 living witness. If there are any antediluvians in these parts, 
 they are, most probably, widows or bachelors, and too sensitive 
 about their age to admit that they know anything Avhatever 
 about customs and habits that obtained in those days, but if 
 back to that long wet spell we must go, you must make up your 
 mind to uavel down the highway of ages by the lamp of his- 
 tory, and then grope your way to Noah's ark, by whatever light 
 those sparks make, which, for over six thousand years, have 
 been emitted from the furnaces of" human nature. Let us take 
 our lamp, then, and thread our way at once to the tent of God- 
 frey, when, at the head of an army of 200,000 men, in the year 
 1095, he marched against Jerusalem, and we shall find him 
 playing a game of chess for a wager. Intermit, then, if you 
 please, 1500 years, and swing out your lamp again over the 
 oracular groves of Delphi, and you will find that there, about 
 the time the inspired prophet Jeremiah died, the Pythean games 
 were established, under the auspices of the Athenian sage Solon. 
 Then turn your face again towards the flood, and let the light of 
 
17 
 
 your lamp fall upon the walls of Corinth, and you will find that, 
 in that city, 1326 years before the Star of Bethlehem had risen, 
 Sisyphus the reigning king, instituted the Isthmian games, and 
 if you will then go to Elis, you will find that the very same 
 Olympic games, wliich that wise law-giver, Lycurgus, centuries 
 subsequently restored in the same city, were, 1453 years before 
 the birth of Christ, instituted by Ida^i Daetyli. Now, what 
 were these games. History informs us that they consisted of 
 chariot races, horse races, toot races, wrestling, boxing, quoit 
 pitching, cV^c. tS:c., in which the victor bore olF a prize. Some 
 times it was one thing, some times it was another, just precisely 
 as jockey clubs in these days sometimes give a purse and at 
 other times a pitcher or a cup. Who has not heard of the Derby 
 Stake and the Goodwood Cup? Well, is it gambling to enter a 
 liorse for a stake at New Market or Fairfield, and, if he wins, 
 pocket the tin. If it is not, the contestants at Elis, Corinth and 
 Delphi did not gamble; but, if it is, they did; and why, I ask, 
 did Cappadocia acquire so much fame for the cultivation of fleet 
 horses, if nothing was to be made out of their speed. History 
 also informs us that these games were witnessed by thousands of 
 excited people. Do you believe, sir, that there ever was a foot, 
 chariot or horse race, witnessed at any period in this world's 
 history, by thousands of excited men, on which nothing was 
 bet? If sincerely you do, I must turn over your amazing ver- 
 dancy to the protection of Providence, for it is greatly to be ap- 
 prehended that no other power is competent to take care of it. 
 Look into the history of our fallen race, and you will find that, 
 from that early hour in the gray dawn of creation, in which the 
 choral song of the morning stars first broke upon the cradled 
 slumbers of a new-born world, down to the present moment, 
 the virtues that have adorned and ennobled, and the vices that 
 have degraded and destroyed the human race, have been in the 
 self-same, identical virtues and vices. That same devouring 
 and insatiable passion to clutch gold, that same opum furiata 
 cvpido which makes millions of reckless gamblers to-day, has 
 existed in all of its infernal intensification in all ages of time. 
 Dispute it if you dare; disjirove it if you can. An absolute free- 
 man never yet breathed the vital air of Heaven. Every man's 
 bosom is the throne of more or less passion, and all men are, to 
 a greater or less extent, the slave's of these despotic passions. 
 If, then, these passions have been in all ages the same, I nmst 
 insist that there is no fair escape from the corollary that the same 
 propensities, which are born of these passions to-day, must have 
 been the natural ofl'spring of the same passions long before that 
 big shower ever fell. Admit this proposition, and you settle the 
 fact, not only that spectators gambled on the Olympic, Isthmian 
 and Pythean games, but you finally settle the tiood business, 
 3 
 
18 
 
 too. Deny it, and that fact must settle you. So, if you aire 
 fond of liorns, I am happy to be able to congratulate you that 
 you are about to get one. Utrum horum mavis occipe. Pray, 
 sir, how do you account for the strange fact that Noah did not 
 land one of his sons on the Western hemisphere. 
 
 There is but one rational way to accouut for it. Ham, being 
 a negro, was no doubt given to understand that Africa would be 
 his legacy, and the balance of the Eastern Hemisphere was 
 given to one of the white boys, and the whole of the Western 
 given to the other. Allow me now to inquire did you ever 
 make a sea voyage? If you never did I am afraid you will not 
 appreciate the solution that follows. The fact is, the dark and 
 dismal monotony of unbroken dullness that reigns over the 
 broad surface of mid ocean sets over the decks of a ship like a 
 juggling devil, mocking the burning thirst of the restive passen- 
 gers, who are continually straining their ingenuity to invent 
 some means whereby they may be able to get only one drop of 
 the fresh, pure waters of excitement to cool their parching 
 tongues. Undersuchcircumstances, they play ''fox and geese," 
 ''hull gull," "crack lieu," "odd oreven," "heads and tails," 
 "old sledge," or any and everything else they can play. Well, 
 irom all accounts, that must have been a lonesome time Noah 
 and his family had floating over the dreary waste of shoreless 
 waters, and is it not quite probable that Shem and Japheth re- 
 solved that they would have a little excitement, and played "crack 
 lieu" fir the whole of the old man's estate, and the one who 
 was only to have had the Eastern Hemisphere won the Western, 
 and as he did not at that time have force enough to clear and 
 fence in this neck of woods, he no doubt concluded to let it lay 
 out for a while; and the brothers pretending that there was no 
 special necessity for their separation at tl)at time, persuaded their 
 good old father to land at Ararat, and he did. But you call on 
 me also for the proof that Barsabas and Matthias were rival can- 
 didates, &c. Well, it seems that they had both been with our 
 Saviour and Disciples "all the lime he went in and out among 
 them." They both knew of the vacancy, and if they both did 
 not want it why were their names bf)th given forth in lots? If 
 nobody wanted it why did they put in only those two names? 
 It is not usual for candidates to announce their own postulancy 
 or be presoit when their nomhiation occurs. Such matters are 
 still managed in these days precisely as they were in those — not 
 personally, but by proxy; and while it is a compliment to their 
 modesty that they were not present when their lots were cast, it 
 does not follow that they did not know all about it, and respec- 
 tively desire success. But when we look into the matter we 
 find that there is just as much evidence that they were present 
 as there is that they were absent. Where, sir, is your evidence 
 
19 
 
 that they were not pveseiit? You say they did not gamble for 
 it. I say they did. Tiiey submitted their names to the arbitra- 
 ment of chance. Th^ir respectii'e chances for success were 
 staked one against the other — Barsabas lost, Matthias won. 
 But you say it was not gambling because it wanted the cardinal 
 ingredient of gambling, to wit: the getting of something for 
 nothing. That is not a sound general position in the first place, 
 and if it is, it may not in the second place be true in this in- 
 stance, for it may have been the only means by which Matthias 
 could have gotten that office at all; and if it was, ho did get 
 something for nothing. But you say gambling consists in the 
 obtaining of one man's money by another without consideration. 
 What is a consideration? Law-writers say it is that which one 
 man gives of one thing in exchange for another thing. In the 
 commercial world there is known what is technically termed 
 chances, and when a speculator purchases one of these chances 
 the courts have always held that the chance ions a legal and 
 valuable consideration; and whenever a man stakes five hun- 
 dred dollars upon the turn of a card, which, if it comes his way, 
 wins that sum for him, and which is liable to win or lose, he has 
 simply purchased a chance to make five hundred dollars by 
 risking, not paying, that sum for it. Do you reply that the 
 chance is not worth the price paid for it? I will answer you 
 with the old Latin maxim, " Tantum bona volent, quantum vcndi 
 pessunt. (^Things are worth just as much as they will sell for.) 
 
 You altogether misapprehend my allusion to Clay, Prentiss, 
 Fox and Sheridan. I did not say that because such men gam- 
 bled it could not be put down, or that they popularized it. I 
 referred to their indulgence as, not a cau^e, but an evidence, of 
 its popularity , as well as to illustrate the power of its fascination, 
 and ergo, its capacity to resist a war upon it. For surely, if it 
 could subdue such giant intellects as those men had, it will be 
 a vain piece of presumption in men of less intellectual strength, 
 to attempt and expect to subdue it. Therefore, you got in on 
 Fox's shirt bosom, his mistress, and his general habits of de- 
 bauchery, at the wrong time and place; and, sir, 1 respectfully 
 inquire of you, why did you insert and comment on only a part 
 of my quotation from the lips of Brutus? Why did you not 
 complete it, and deny that when men of rank gamble '^ chastise- 
 ment" dees 'therefore hide its head?" This is a sad, and yet 
 incontrovertible truth; and yet, your avenging thunders sleep! 
 Why? Will you leave echo to answer why? Fear you not 
 that our readers will say of you, if you do, '< he was called into 
 court, put on the witness stand, and when asked a direct and 
 plain question, lo! nil dicit. 
 
 Your next slip up is literally astounding. What do you mean 
 by asserting that public opinion has put down gambling for 
 
20 
 
 money, among females? That may be true, in good old Bote- 
 tourt. 1 doubt very miicli whether the cultivated gentlewomen 
 of any portion of Virginia, or any one of the Confederate States, 
 ever did gamble, and 1 trust they never will; but nothing is 
 more notorious, than that at Saratoga Springs, there is a lady's 
 Ronletl room, where gambling has raged for years. It was kept 
 by a man whose name was Gridley. Where have. you been, 
 and what have you read for several years past, that you could 
 have stumbled upon such an egregious error? Visit the fash- 
 ionable summer resorts of Europe, and you will find and see 
 that the Avomen gamble more to-day than they did before the 
 satire of Addison was \vrittcn; aye, even while that same pas- 
 quinade is staring them in the face, from the eagle-eyed pages of 
 the Spectator. Read the "Souveners" of oar accomplished 
 and universally admired and beloved country woman, Madam 
 Le Vert, and yon will find that she paints a picture of female 
 gambling, at Baden Baden, from which the good and gentle 
 ought to" shrink with horror. Female gambling in the 17th cen- 
 tury was confined to the nobility and private parties; Avhereas 
 now women in Europe visit public gaming houses and fight the 
 "Tiger" like wild cats. Funny triumph, that of Addison's. 
 
 Again, you entirely misconstrue my interrogatory, <^ when 
 and where was gambling ever put down?" and treat the mat- 
 ter precisely as you ought to have treated it if 1 had asserted 
 gambling could not and ought not to be put down. Whereas, I 
 am absolutely advocating the only policy by which it ever has 
 been or ever can be diminished. Put douui, 1 seriously appre- 
 hend it never can be, and, I may say, I know it never can as 
 long as it is not licensed. You sneer contemptuously at my 
 reference to France and Germany, and denounce them as infidel 
 nations. T deny that they are infidel nations; but if they are, 
 is it not a burning, blasting commentary upon the holloAv and 
 impotent laws of your own christian country, that if a gentleman 
 sits down to enjoy an evenmg's amusement at a card table, he 
 may be swindled "out of thousands, without having open to him 
 any form of redress he can honorably invoke, whereas, if he 
 loses one ])enny among the infidels, by foul means, their laws 
 immediately interpose, and promptly restore it. Pray, sir, how 
 much do you make then by your infidelity sensation? 13ut I 
 find I shall be compelled to resume the discussion to-morrow; 
 when I shall do what you have not yet thought proper to do, 
 that is come down in warm earnest upon gambling and gam- 
 blers, and prove, as I think I clearly can, sir, that instead of as- 
 sailing this vice, you are encouraging and fostering it in all its 
 most revolting putridity and iniquity, and that nine gamblers 
 out of every ten sympathize with you, and against 
 
 ERSKINE. 
 
21 
 
 To W. M.: 
 
 When you make random assertions, insusceptible of proof, as 
 you did when you branded Prance and Germany witli national 
 infidelity, and declared that female g:ambling had been put down ; 
 and when you deny facts insusceptible of refutation, as you did 
 when you denied that gambling is a " pet passion of the mil- 
 lion," you excite in my mind the suspicion that you are young 
 and reckless: and, inasmuch as you have drawn your blade on 
 the side of the gamblers, I find vague spectral fears creeping into 
 my bnsom that that diabolical serpent that has charmed and 
 mined so many jiromising young men, by making them gam- 
 blers, is about to throw over your brilliant genius its fatal spell. 
 The splendid intellect with which nature has endowed you has 
 carried off my heart injto captivity, and I cannot resist the incli- 
 nation of my ardent temperament to commune with you affec- 
 tionately and frankly. And let me connnence by imploring you 
 to turn your face and your pen against gambling. If you play 
 and lose you'll he nicknamed a booby, and if you play and win 
 you'll be suspected a scoundrel. Always when you lose you 
 will pay your losses, and often when you win you will never 
 collect your winnings. You will often have to play with men 
 whose vulgar exultation when they beat you will disgust you, 
 and whose terrific profanity when you beat them must shock 
 you. The excitement gambling produces is not natural, there- 
 fore the result upon your physical condition cannot be salutary. 
 While playit)g, yon will often have to breath the fetid atmosphere 
 of a close room, and forfeit that repose and exercise necessary to 
 health, happiness and longevity, the sequel of which is almost 
 certain to be a shattered constitution, premature old age and an 
 ignonunious grave. This counsel I should not have given you 
 but for the fact that I have taken a fancy to you, and you know 
 "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and 
 but for the additional fact that this opposition of yours to licens- 
 ing gambling amounts not only to an advocacy of gambling, 
 but to a vindication of the very lowest and basest class of gam- 
 blers. I have already told you that your sentiments on this sub- 
 ject are popular, and that mine are unpopular, among the gam- 
 blers; and sir, this is literally tnie. There are in New Orleans 
 about 110 gambling establishments, and when they were called 
 upon, not long since, to vote for and against licensing gambling, 
 but two houses voted for it. Put the same question before the 
 gamblers of Kirhmond to-morrow, and they will vote it down by 
 an overwhelming majority. The day your article appeared the 
 Whiix ^^'as in unusual demand among the gamblers, and, I have 
 heard repeatedly since, that they wen^ profoundly delighted with 
 the signal ability with which you defended their interests. " Who 
 is W. M.?" ' "Huzza for \V. M.!" '' W. M.'s the man for my 
 
money," were the kind of compliments that were freely lavished 
 upon you that day in the grogshops that class patronize, and 
 your health was drunk a thousand and one times, my dear sir, 
 until the J03' of the revellers was put to sleep by the potency of 
 their potations; and if you Avere to visit the city to-morrow, and 
 that fact should become known to them they would be certain 
 to serenade you, if they did not call upon you in a body and ten- 
 der you a supper ? Would you accept it? I hope not. In truth, 
 I cannot bring myself to a realization of the fact that between 
 you and them there is any collusion. Nay, I scorn to believe it; 
 and 1 cheerfully retract the imputation made against you in the 
 insinuation that you had drawn your blade on the side of the 
 gamblers; and while 1 deplore the result of your article, I will 
 acquit you of a sinister motive, and if you are innocent, as on 
 my soul I believe you are, of any thing resembling a friendly 
 purpose towart^Alie sporting gentry, you will be at a loss to divine 
 the cause of yo'ur sudden and marvellous popularity among that 
 class. Proceeding, then, upon the presumption that you are inno- 
 cent of the desire and ignorant of the cause of your popularity, 
 I will with alacrity explain it to you. Then, sir, you must know 
 that gambling, like all other avocations, is pursued by two dis- 
 tinct classes of men. One class, and it is much the largest, are, 
 in their moral status, very little above thieves and cut-throats. 
 They occupy the same level with highwaymen, in some respects, 
 ^nd fall infinitely below them in others. They have their cun- 
 ning and their cupidity, but they lack their courage and their 
 chivalry. 
 
 They have in their faro boxes what are called "snakes," and 
 drugged liquors on their sideboards. They deal marked cards 
 and turn for more money than, if they were to lose, they could 
 pay. They have in their employ " pensioned pimps," who 
 might, I think, be more properly designated human slough 
 hounds, whose business it is to hunt down "old suckers" and 
 "young green-horns" for customers, and then they have hired 
 " cappers," who, when the customer is roped, " starts the game." 
 In the larger cities it is said that their cubile ferarwni are full of 
 sensation traps, which, when they set to phizzing, will involunta- 
 rily attract attention, during which moment the silent partners of 
 the concern, who are at their post, make a clean sweep of all the 
 checks lying about loose — and this is the class, my dear sir, who 
 were thrown into ecstacies by your able article. License gam- 
 bUng and you seal up hermetically forever the faro boxes of all 
 such thieving scoundrels. The tax they cannot pay, the bond 
 they cannot give, and therefore their coupe-gorges they cannot 
 (Open. And those who could and would pay the tax and give 
 • the bond would necessarily become a police to enforce the law, 
 whom those who violated it could never elude, but no such a pQ- 
 
^3 
 
 lice would eVfer be needed if it were made, as it ought to be, a 
 felony to visit and bet in an unlicensed establishment,- You at- 
 tempted to make an ari^ument about such a provision amounting 
 to a restriction upon human liberty, in that it might require a 
 man to walk or ride farther than might be agreeable to his feel- 
 ings to find a licensed esiahlishmeut It was bad enough in you 
 to offer such a statement for an argument. Were I to give it the 
 ■aittention of an answer I should become a fit subject, not for the 
 sport of laughter, but the charily of commisseration. 
 
 But there is another class of gamblers entitled to a place in 
 this picture. It is that class who are in favor of making cheat- 
 ing and swindling in gambling houses felonies, and who are also 
 in favor of making gamblmg a source of revenue to the govern- 
 ment. Among them are to be found gentlemen occupying a firm 
 and high position in private and public confidence. Mr. Burns, 
 dt Baltimore, Md., one of them, represented a large Southern 
 city at Cincinnatti when Buchanan was nominated in '56 and at 
 Charleston in '(50, when the Convention failed to make a nomina- 
 tion. From the acquaintances of that gentlen)an f have learned 
 the fact that he wields as nuich moral influence at home as any 
 other unpretending private citizen, and that he has given more 
 money to build churches and relieve the poor within the last ten 
 years than any other one man on the continent, and that he is 
 thoroughly in otio et ncgotio probus (upright in business and out 
 of business.) 
 
 In the city of Augusta, Ga., there resides a gambler*, a more 
 elegant gentleman than whom no civilized country under the 
 sun can produce. In his appearance, deportment, general edu- 
 cation, sentiments and feelings he is a thorough and perfect gen- 
 tleman. 
 
 Poor Prindle, 'Mie sleeps his last sleep," but when he was a 
 sojourner in <Mhis vale of tears," he would, if he could, have 
 dried every tear in the vale. H(! was the boon companion of the 
 foremost men of the age. In dealing with men he was notonlj'' 
 liberally honorable, but scrupulously honest. lie could always' 
 borrow anybody's money and all they had. In his benevolence 
 he was a philanthropist, and in his nuinificence he was a Prince. 
 Among the churches and the poor he scattered his dollars like a 
 husbaixlman in se«;d-time scatt^reth liis grain. A thousand here, 
 and a thousand there, was nothing; for him to give. He did it 
 often, and always frcelv. He lived a gambler, and died a aam- 
 bler; but his njcmory jingf^reth among mau and will not depart. 
 Why? If h.is not been Ion? since a young gambler died in \'ir- 
 glnia, who graduated with the first honors of our first Universi- 
 ties, and whose accomplishments ranked him among the ripest 
 
 • Wiley Barron. 
 
24 
 
 scholars of the age. In this city, I am told, there resides at this 
 time a professional gambler,* whose literary attainments and col- 
 loquial gifts pre-eminently fit him to ornament and delight the 
 most cultivated society in Christendom, and others \vhose esta- 
 blished integrity commands universal respect and confidence. 
 They, too, have given to the poor, to the army hospitals, and to 
 churches, dollars by the thousand. Do you say I am fast 
 becoming the eulogist of gamblers? I deny it. I am merely* 
 stating facts, the veritable existence of which you dare not deny 
 and cannot refute. If their existence encumbers the path of 
 your argument, don't blame me^ for I did not create them. 
 
 "Thou canst not say I did it, never shake 
 Thy gory locks at me." 
 
 But inasmuch as I can build an argument upon the basis which 
 they form, I had both a moral and a legal right to refer to them; 
 and I do solemnly assure you it is for that purpose and none 
 other that I have referred to them at all. They are not only 
 facts, but stubborn facts, and stand like lions in the path you 
 and I must tread when we attempt to put down gambling. I 
 have not mentioned one of them in a complimentary spirit. 
 1 have merely reluctantly admitted their existence in a business 
 aspect, because they stare me in the face, and must be con- 
 fronted. I have assumed that gambling cannot be directly and to- 
 tally suppressed, and to support that assumption 1 have drawn 
 the above truthful picture of the lives and habits of some of the 
 men who gamble. Such men always have had, and always will 
 have, powerful friends and hosts of them, and it is this style of 
 men who popularize gambling and make it an irrepressible evil 
 in the land. The true and real reason, then, why gambling 
 never can be suppressed, is not because this or that man gambles, 
 but because, in the first place, too many men of all claisses and 
 conditions in society are too fond of it, and in the second place, 
 because this class of gamblers I have just described loill play an 
 honest and a fair game. In fact, they provide lor their game 
 such checks and safeguards as renders cheatery and fraud a phy- 
 sical impossibility, and this is more to be deplored than admired. 
 Would to God that there was not an honest gambler on earth, 
 then we might suppress it; but as there are, and always will be, 
 I am in favor of making them all so, and that is precisely what 
 you oppose when you oppose the legislative regulations I have 
 suggested. PlainJy and bluntly stated, these are the facts. I 
 say if we must have gambling, let us have an honest game. 
 You say, no; if gambling cannot be put down, let fraud, cheat- 
 
 * Audrew A. Monteiro. 
 
25 
 
 ing, thieving, and villainy in it abound and flourish. At least, 
 this must be the result of what you do, say whatever you may. 
 
 There is also another insuperable obstacle in the path of 
 reformation. It is the fact, that no blow is aimed .at gai?}- 
 bling, but only at gambling irithcarrfs. Horse-racing for money 
 is gambling, and is tolerated by law. Betting on elections is 
 gambling, and is not inhibited. Lotteries and raffles are gam- 
 bling, and now, while I am writing, the pastors and deacons of 
 all the churches in New Orleans arc getting up lotteries and raf- 
 fles for the benefit of the army hospitals. Is it right to suppress 
 one s|iecies of gambling and patronize another? Will not a 
 voice come up from the dust in which the one is trampled cry- 
 ing out against yon, trumpet tongued, "Persecution, persecu- 
 tion! Shame, shame!" And is there not great danger if you 
 allow men to gamble in one way and forbid it in another, that, 
 when you attempt to punish a culprit for gambling in his way 
 instead of yours, the strong arm of public sympathy will be 
 stretched forth to rescue him from your grasp. Children at school 
 despise a partial tencher, anH the grown-np children, called the 
 people, will not tolerate an arbitrary law tiiat discriminates be- 
 tween the fancies and tastes of men, and titcij are ris^/it. I am 
 opposed to this mincing business, and insist that the whole hog 
 shall be put througli. 
 
 You seem to have a great passion for logic, but unfortunately 
 your fancy fir it seems to outstrip your talent. That landed 
 estate argument that you affected to imagine was a felicitous il- 
 lustration, of the manner in which Barsabas and Matthias settled 
 who was to succeed Judas, and the Roman soldiers settled who 
 was to have the seamless coat, is utterly seemless of even a re- 
 semblance to a parallel. When a landed estate is divided, in 
 the way you stated, among heirs, it is not to settle who gets a 
 lot and who loses one, but who gets which lot. They are all of 
 the same value, and nothing is risked and nothing can be lost. 
 Whereas every Roman soldier risked his claim to the coat, and 
 all but one lost, Barsabas and Mathias,or their friends for them, 
 risked their respective claims to the apostleship, and Barsabas 
 lost. And this, sir, is the true, fidl, legal, and only correct, de- 
 finition of gambling, to wit: the risk the bettor takes, and risking 
 is always gambling, whether it be life, honors or property, that 
 is at stake. 
 
 You seem to be electrified with aholy horror at the proposition 
 which you say will relieve gambling of its odium. Strange in- 
 fatuation this, of \ ours, that you can elevate and ennoble a young 
 nation, by enh;incing the odium and increasing the ]X)pular in- 
 dulgence of Its irrepressible vices. When you lessen the num- 
 ber of gamblers, are you not bound to dmiinish, ;prora/a, gam- 
 bling. License gambling, and you will drive out of the busi- 
 4 
 
26 
 
 liess, as with a thong of scorpions, nine out of ten who now 
 follow it for a liveliliood, and those you drive out will be the 
 very men who seduce your sons and mine and the sons of our 
 neighbors; whereas, the more honorable class, who could pay 
 the tax and obtain a license, would scorn to even invite, much 
 less persuade, a beardless boy to bet, and many ol' them would, 
 as I am told they repeatedly have done peremptorily, forbid their 
 admission to their rooms. And now, in conclusion, allow me 
 to ask you: do you believe cards have ever done among sober 
 men, the one-tenth part of the mischief liquor has among in- 
 temperate n\en? Yet, in this young, christian, republic, grog- 
 shops are licensed: aye, when millions upon millions are annu- 
 ally falling around you, like the sere and yellow leaves fall under 
 auturnnal blasts, from the effects of the slow poisons they im- 
 bibe in these Borgia drain-shops. In these Ferarar hells, hale 
 constitutions are sapped, the promise of youth is blasted, the 
 hopes of age are crushed, generous hearts are broken and noble 
 souls are lost. Yet, your christian laws license them, and that, 
 too, when the natiiral result of it is to multi[ily druid\;u-ds,,£,'-«/7i.- 
 blers, and murderers, and you refuse to license gambling, when 
 that course would be bound to diminish it. t'h ! consistency, 
 hypocrisy, and moral cowardice, where are your blushes. 
 
 ERSKINE. 
 
 To the Editor of the Whig: 
 
 Some ten days ago, sir, I sent you a communication, in re- 
 ference to an article, on the "suppression of gambling," which 
 had appeared in the columns of the Whig, on the 7th ult., over 
 the pseudonym of " Erskine." I had no desire to be identified 
 particularly with the author of the production in question, and 
 accordingly addressed you, and, through yourself, any who 
 might feel such interest, as the seriousness of the subject was 
 calculated to inspire, simply making the observations of "Ers- 
 kine" the theme of argumentative criticism. In that article, I 
 was studious to avoid anything which the most sensitive cour- 
 tesy could forbid. I was, therefore, somewhat surprised to see 
 in a day or so, a letter, followed next day by a second, in the 
 PFAio-, addressed to W. M. and signed "Erskine," in which 
 " Erskine" arrayed himself against tne, and that certainly not in 
 the most refined way. Politer terms surely might have been dis- 
 covered after a very brief search. If "Erskine" is not satisfied 
 with the force of my logic in this matter, he certainly will, in his 
 own mind, admit what ought to have been the power of my 
 example. His impatience, as soon as he read my comments oa 
 
2Y 
 
 his argument, was decidedly interesting, as well to others, as 
 to mj'-self, for the simple reason that it caused to pass before the 
 mental eye, the image of a breast sticking fnll of arrows, not 
 from any particular skill in the archer, but from the breadth, and 
 nearness of the mark. In the two letters, Avhich " Erskine" 
 has addressed to me, he has not succeeded in tugging one of 
 these arrows from his grieved bosom. Althougli he sa5'-s in re- 
 gard to the fine tilings he writes concerning gamblers: "I do 
 solemnly assure y<Hi, it is for that purpose (the purpose of argu- 
 ment) and none other, that I have referred to them at all," it is 
 still most evident, Mr. Editor, that the effect of all this is com- 
 pliment to gamesters. "Erskine" may say, he does not mean 
 this, and of course I am bound to believe it, as he tells me so, 
 but I am at liberty to remember that there is such a thing as 
 ''sinning ignorantly," and I incline to the opinion that the in- 
 telligent readers of the Whig-, who were not deterred by the 
 unique and ungracious opening of ^'Erskine's" letter to me 
 from giving the rest of it a perusal, will be slow to think that 
 there is, at all events, an adequate horror of gambling where the 
 writer has so high an opinion of the colloquial powers, refine- 
 ment and universal culture of these daily and hourly violators of 
 public law, these main stays of a host of inferior thieves, these 
 very pcst.s of society. Lovers of law and morality do not gene- 
 rally speak in this strain, and when a writer addresses the pub- 
 lic, recommending a certain measure against any vice, and at 
 the same time uses language concerning its votaries, to which 
 men are not habituated, he is entirely mistaken if he fancies 
 they can be easily reconciled to his proposal. The way of such 
 a reformer is through a liedge of thorns, or if I may change the 
 language, I see " Erskine" a-^saying to swing against a broad, 
 rapid and expanding channel, and borne away exhausted and 
 terrified towards the cataract of public condemnation. But I 
 must not stay by this abyss. 
 
 1 did net mean, Mr. Editor, to raise an ''immaterial issue" 
 when 1 asked "Erskine" ibr the proof of his assertion that, 
 "before the flood, Ciiance was a (jod, at whose altar millions 
 worshipped." I did not care particularly how it might have 
 been, as relates to the argument, not thinking, as "Erskine" 
 did, thai antiquity adds anything to the dignity of a vice! I 
 only knew that there was no particle of evidence of gaming 
 having gone on, in the antediluvian era, and simply designed, 
 in calling for his proof, (which, of course, he did not have,) to 
 throw over him, like a mantle, the confession of having made a 
 positive statement, which was entirely without foundation. This 
 Avas my chief object, and ''Erskine" is welcome to the result. 
 Of course I did not have any abstract choice, whether gaming 
 was ancient or modern. If it had been committed prior to the 
 
28 
 
 flood, that would have no more been an extenuation of it than 
 such antiquity could diminish the gnilt of the violence and 
 bloodshed which, as we are informed, then prevailed. My ob- 
 ject was what I have stated it to be, and '^Erskine" must not 
 blame me, or the truth-loving readers of the Whig, if we re- 
 member that, at least in one instance, he has shov/n himself 
 capable of making a random assertion — one having its origin in 
 a mere flight of his swift imagination. 
 
 It is true, sir, that ''Erskine" proves tlie existence of the 
 Isthmian, Pythean and Olympic games, which no one denied, 
 but the earliest of them had no being for over a thousand years 
 subsequent to the flood. I criticised, with rather an unpleasant 
 effect on the mind of ^'Erskine," his positive averment that 
 millions gamed before the flood; and he must now allow me to 
 freshen his classical reminiscences, by calling his attention to a 
 very prominent feature in the ancient games, which was that the 
 prize on the various occasions was, in iisdf, usnally, if not 
 always, worthless. If "Erskine" had read his '^Gibbon" or 
 his ^'Kennett" lately, he would have remembered that a "sim- 
 ple garland" was the tangible prize in the races of the Roman 
 Stadium, though money was very often given to the successful 
 competitor by other persons. The money was not a stake, put 
 up by the competitors themselves, but by admirers of those 
 games, just as a pecuniary prize is now-a-days offered for the 
 best literary work on some specified subject. T/ie prize, how- 
 ever, was a "crown of leaves," and above and beyond that the 
 supposed '^imperishable rerioioii'''' of the victor in the national 
 games. The money was an incidental thing, a voluntary offer- 
 ing from the by-standers or officers of the games, sometimes 
 given and sometimes not given. Ausonius, as translated by 
 Addison, would have informed "Erskine" to this effect, as far 
 as the prize of the Grecian games was concerned. 
 
 " Greece, in four games thy martial youth were trained; 
 For lieroes, two, and two for gods ordained: 
 Jove bare the olivt round bis victor wave, 
 Phoebus to his an apple gw land gave; 
 Tlie pine, Palaenon; nor, with less renown 
 Archemoriis conferred the parsleij crown." 
 
 The leafy chaplet, as representing the crown of undying 
 honor, with which the victor was to be rewarded, for his own' 
 sake and that of his family for some generations, was the prize 
 in those ancient contests. The money that might be given was 
 not an object in the minds of more noble aspirants. If it had 
 been in any case known to be the absorbing object of the suc- 
 cessful contestant, when we reflect on the high ideasthe ancients 
 had of the glories of these games, it is likely that the judges 
 would have refused to have crowned such an one, as unworthy, 
 
ill consequence of the low motive that impelled him. That bet- 
 ting took place among the outsiders, of course, is probable, as 
 '^Erskine" tells us. Indeed, I can inform ''Erskine" of what 
 he evidently does not know, which is, that there were games of 
 chance ncrtainlij about the Chiislian era, and that money was 
 put up, as now, by the gamesters. He did not know this, else he 
 would have given it as an authoritative fact, instead of relying 
 on unfounded assertions in reference to the national games. If 
 ^'Erskine" was really versed in the literature of this subject as 
 well as he seems to be in the Arcana of those unhappy men, the 
 gamesters of the present day, he would surely have given his 
 readers the benefit of the significant line of Perseus, as translated 
 by Dryden, 
 
 " To shun Amez-Ace that swept my stakes away." 
 
 I have vindicated the National Games of Antiquity, Mr. Edi- 
 tor, from the misconceptions of the author of these letters to me, 
 and, while I inform him of the actual gaming of a remote pe- 
 riod, must lake occasion to express my moral disapprobation of 
 these practices — a disapprobation he has not avowed in reference 
 to the alleged gambling of the public games in Italy and Greece. 
 I condemn such things wherever foiuid', whatever called, do not 
 consider them ''the legitimate offspring of human passions," as 
 he does, bnt the most veritable bastards of fallen himianity, and, 
 like other illegitimates, laboring under the ban of the virtuous 
 and pure in every land and in every age. Acknowledging, as 
 every one ac(]uainted with history nnist do, that gaming for 
 money had a right ancient origin, I must insist on the idea that 
 the anti(]uity of the vice is no vindication of it, more than it is of 
 any other immorality, and will only remind this writer that it 
 was when the children of Israel, in the de.sert, "sat down to 
 eat and drink, (at their idolatrous feast,) and rose up to play," 
 (prohably game,) that the Most High said to Moses, "this is a 
 stiff-necked people, let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot 
 against them, and that T may consume them." 
 
 "Erskine," I think, may be satisfactorily dispo.sed of, by a 
 few calm observations on his other points, lie insists on it, that 
 Matthias and Barsabas gambled for the vacant Apostleship,ancr, 
 in the same paragraph, speaks of gambling as "a vice of no or- 
 dinary magnitude." Were these disciples of .Tosus guilty of an 
 immorality of " no ordinary masnitude." Will "Erskine" tell 
 his Christian readers this? Solomon tells us that "the lot is 
 cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof i.s of the 
 Lord." Is the Loid, then, accessory to "a vice of no ordinary 
 magnitude? If not, then, the lot and gambling are not the 
 same thing. Apart from this consideration, I a.ssert that they 
 did not thus gamble, and it seems to be the result of unreflec- 
 
30 
 
 tion to make np one's mind to sa}' that they did. How conld 
 there be teaming where neither lost anything that he had pre- 
 viously possessed? Conld men ever make anything ont of each 
 other, by this kind of gambling? This writer sa3^s the parties, 
 each, risked his claim, but does he not see that the claim is 
 practically a thing of nanght, until after the decision of the lot? 
 Nobody bad anything to lose, and the evil of gambhng lies in 
 the fact, that one loses perhaps his all, without anything what- 
 ever in the shape of an equivalent. What ''Erskine" calls a 
 *' claim," is in reality not a claim, because there is neither pos- 
 session or ownership in the case. The ownership, or real claim, 
 can only be established by the lot. He says, the chance of get- 
 ting something is risked, and that judges have decided that "a 
 chance" is a reality. But he must discriminate between this last 
 kind of "chance" and the gaming "chance." " Erskine" 
 knows that the lawmakers and jndges decide in the matter of 
 ^awino- that this "chance" is practically nothing. This is the 
 essential foundation of the law. The doctrine of the law is, 
 that except in matters of ciiarity, or "gifts in fee simple," pro- 
 perty shall not pass from one man's hand to another's without 
 some return, for the reason that the principle is intrinsically 
 vicious. If I exchange merchandise for money, with my neigh- 
 bor, there is a chance that each may make by the operation, or 
 if money is paid for doubtful paper, the courts will determine 
 that "the chance" is a reality, because the paper mmj bring 
 something. But if a gambler puts another man's money into 
 his pocket, leaving hnn jieiiniless, what chance is there that 
 the losing man will make anything by the transaction ? In 
 trade botli parties may be benefitted. In gaming only one can 
 be. This is the philosophy of the vice of gambling, the theory 
 of the laws against gambling, and however "Erskine" may 
 deceive his own mind, I think, if he, deeming it as he does a 
 vice of no ordinary dimensions, will analyze his thoughts, he 
 will find, that so far from tliis risked chance mitigating the 
 offence, the whole guilt of the crime, does, in a circle of fire, 
 flash and play around this very point, this chance, which is not 
 a chance. 
 
 * "Erskine" complains that I misunderstand him in his allu- 
 sions to Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan and others. How is this, sir? 
 He said plainly enough that the gaming of these men showed 
 it to be popular in the best circles, and therefore it would be 
 almost, if not wholly, impossible seriously to diminish it. I 
 said, in reply, that the fact of the commission of this vice by 
 these persons no more proved it to be popular in high circles 
 than the practice of other vices by these men proved them to be 
 popular and difficult to be overcome. What other treatment 
 could an opponent give to so transparent a fallacy? And how 
 
31 
 
 have I misconstrued the writer? It would require a more plausi- 
 ble pen than his to show any misconstruction whatever; and he 
 must support the \veight which the refutation of his argument 
 throws on him as well as he can. 
 
 In my letter to you, sir, I had spoken of the power of public 
 opinion, as against gaming, and said that it had been signally 
 shown, by the almost entire extinction of female gambling. I 
 referred to the scadiing diatribes of Addison as helping to give 
 birth and body to this effective public sentiment. But "Ers- 
 kine," with a sharpness which your readers will be at a loss to 
 appreciate, sees something " literally astounding" in this. He 
 points us to Germany, and to Continental Europe generally, to 
 show that f(3males still game fearfully, and also to a lady's rou- 
 lette-room at Saratoga Springs, this latier accompanied by the 
 very addin'onal circumstance of being "kept by a man whose 
 name was Grindle!" Does that refute my statement? Wlien I 
 spoke of Addison, and of English opinion, as moulded by his 
 writings, did any reader of the W/dsr^ except " Erskine," ima- 
 gine that I was extending this inlluence to Germany, where a 
 different language is used and a dillerent type of civilization ob- 
 tains? I think not. l)oul)tless 1 was understood to mean 
 Anglo-Saxon Christendom, including America. I did mean it, 
 and the fact was as 1 have stated it to be. Gammg is not now a 
 vice among the ladies of England as it was in former days; nor 
 is It a vice of the ladies of the Confederate States. And not- 
 withstanding this roulette-room for females at Saratoga, there is 
 no evidence that gaming is a general thing, even among North- 
 ern women, far as we hold Nortliern society to be from repre- 
 senting Anglo-American civilization. " Erskine " tells the 
 readers of the W/ii;^, thai in Baden-Baden females gamble, and, 
 if I may use his figure, ''fight the tiger like wild-cats." But 
 did he not see the deep into which he was plunging when he 
 gave this information? It will be quite pleasant to all to remem- 
 ber that this Baden-Baden, wliere so odioris a social evil exists, 
 is in Germany, where gaming-houses are established by law, the 
 very inslitution ''Erskine" wishes to see in this State of Vir- 
 ginia. [)oes he not think that Richmond, where gambling- 
 houses are /or^jV/r/r/i by law, will compare very favorably with 
 Baden-Baden, where they are estahlishcd by law? Do revolting 
 and heart-sickening scenes like those described by "Kirwan" 
 and Madam Le Vert, as occurring among femalesin the lawful 
 gaming-houses in Baden, ever transpire in Richmond, where 
 such ])laces are not loleraled by statute? Of course such an as- 
 sertion will not be made. Leaving "Erskine," therefore, to 
 brood over the mishap resulting from his citation, and wishing 
 him greater foresight in fiiiure, 1 pass to another objection. 
 
 I endeavored, in my letter of January 9th, to discredit the 
 
33 
 
 proposed law advocated by "Erskine," by reminding yonr 
 readers that Germany and France were infidel nations. This, 
 of course, was legitimate and natural, but the author of these 
 unique letters to me denies most stoutly that these nations, who 
 take the initiative in passing a law of the kind in question, are 
 infidel in their character. I did not suppose this would be con- 
 troverted by any one, and remark now, that if the French nation, 
 which takes into its bosom such theological vipers as Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, D'Alembert and Cousin, delighting to honor them, 
 and then periodically drenching itself with human blood, pro- 
 claiming "death is an eternal sleep!" if such a people are not 
 practically as well as theoretically infidel, it will be difficult to 
 deteruune infidelity. And if Germany, furnishing the literary 
 works, whence French infidels, Westminster Reviewers and 
 Boston free-thinkers draw their blasphemous stores, is not as in- 
 fidel a nation as any people within the limits of professed Chris- 
 tendom ever could be, it will appear still more difficult to decide 
 what infidelity is. 1 must not, however, discuss this matter 
 further, but willingly leave it to your readers. As for this wri- 
 ter's taunt, that these infidel people will compel tlie payment of 
 a gambling debt, Vv'hile Christian nations will not, 1 have only 
 to say that if France and Germany choose to take their thieving 
 vampires, the gamesters, under especial State protection, by se- 
 curing their ill-gotten gains to them, they are not injuring any 
 one but themselves, and if "Erskine" really wishes to see this 
 evil diminished, he ought to be pleased to have it encompassed 
 by as many barriers and perils as possible. Having reached the 
 end of the gentleman's first letter, I must close, promising to- 
 morrow to look at the second, as decidedly the most striking of 
 the two. 
 
 W. M. 
 Buchanan, Botetourt Co., Va. 
 
 To the Editor of the Whig: 
 
 The second letter of ''Erskine" opens with the singular, 
 though not seriously meant, intimation, that I am favorable to 
 the gamblers, but as he retracts this at once, I will look immedi- 
 ately at his declaration that the gamblers were favorable to my 
 plan, and against his. And first let me say that if ''Erskine" 
 heard them express themselves as thus friendly to my proposal, of 
 course I am bound to believe him, hut if he did not, himself, 
 hear their words, I am afraid he is speaking from some such in- 
 formation as he had; when he stated, positively, that " before the 
 
S3 
 
 flood Chance was a god at whose feet millions worshipped," His 
 friends have soothed him by telling him this, and by believing 
 them, he has exhibited a ciediiHty, only equalled by his vacancy 
 of logic. His iriends could not have heard the gamblers express 
 themselves so repeatedly in my favor, because "Erskiiie's" asso- 
 ciates cannot be the associates of gamesters, to hear them speak 
 so much on one subject, " Erskine" himself certainly would 
 not go among them to listen to their speeches. His unpopu- 
 larity among them, of which he tells us, would certainly prevent 
 their unburdening themselves in his presence, and thus furnish- 
 ing him with an argument against them. If they did express 
 themselves as against legal gammg houses, is it impossible, 
 eitlier in Richmond or New (Orleans, that such men, in order to 
 gain their object, should have made opposition to the plan? Are 
 they incapable of such a ruse? No one can think that they are. 
 Nothing is more easy than such a supposition. If they were op- 
 posed to such a law in New Orleans, what is more natural, when 
 they didkeep their 110 establishments without paying any tax? 
 On these grounds I suspect that the real preference of the gam- 
 blers for my plan over his is somewhat of the nature of an hypo- 
 thesis, which would be good, if true, but not bemg a sound one, 
 is nothing Avorih. How, indeed, Mr. Editor, can these un- 
 happy men be favorable to the law, which 1 would have passed 
 in regard to them? ]t would not allow any public gaming house 
 for them to frequent, and if they gamed in such establishments 
 as now exist, they would be sent to the Penitentiary. Pass a 
 law making gambling, anywhere, a felony, and instead of these 
 men paying, as they now do, a line, some years' incarceration 
 would be the penalty. Could anything be more obvious, than 
 the propnsitiim, that the severer the punishment, the greater the 
 probability that men will be deterred from the commission of the 
 unlawful act? '^ Erskitie's" law would o;;e« houses, where all 
 gamblers can go, and game freely. The law I reconminnd would 
 shut up all the gambling dens in the State, on pain of the State 
 prison, for a tern) of years, if kept in any manner. What is there 
 in this prospect so very pleasing to gamesters? What can gam- 
 blers want with a law which, instead of inflicting a pecuniary 
 mulct, as now, would deprive them of personal liberty for a pro- 
 tracted period? As for the lower class of these pestilential knaves 
 whose trade ''Erskine" would legalize, does he really believe, is 
 he so little acquainted with this world, and the history of courts 
 and licenses &-c., as to believe that these men could not unite 
 (say a nmnber of them) and pay the tax, requisite to keeping 
 one of his lawful gaming places, or to believe that the worst men 
 in the community cannot get son)ebody to go their security? A 
 number of njen, forming a company, carry on the legalized gam- 
 bling houses in Baden-Baden, why could not a company oX 
 5 
 
84 
 
 gamesters, even of the worst sort, open and pay the tax on a 
 lawful gaming plaice in Uichinnnd ? Why could not these vast 
 nnnihers of gamesters found in the land, if their foul work is 
 made lawful, form companies, pay the tax, and fill the purlieus 
 of Richmond with their vile houses, while the wealthier robhers 
 have more elegant ''hells" on JViain Street, and Broad? Why 
 docs not ''Erskine" tremble at such a thought, and grow pale 
 at such a prospect, instead of devoting himself as he now does, 
 to the promotion of so terrific an object? As to tlie belief of this 
 writer, if gaming is licensed, the practice will become conscien- 
 tious, and we shall see a new generation of honest gamblers who 
 would not cheat lor the world, the idea simply excites wonder. 
 Does "Erskine" really know what kind of a world he is in? 
 Has he read the account of the " German Hells" in the Whig 
 of January 15th? As soon as one reads this argument for law- 
 ful gambhng houses, and thinks of "Erskine" embarking in 
 his enterprise, with this idea, he is reminded at once of the band 
 in Jerusalem who joined the ill-fated Absalom, and went forth 
 " in their simplicity, and k7ieiv not anything.'''' 
 
 But, Mr. Editor, we have been made acquainted with some 
 fascinating characters, in the form of gamblers, by the author of 
 tliese letters to me; men of rare genius, literary culture, fine 
 address, and colloquial powers, tliat would enable them to adorn 
 any society, however refined. They are liberal men, too, give 
 to the poor, to the war, arid to churches. They are tender- 
 hearted men also, fond of drying up other people's tears, and walk 
 lovingly among the woes and sorrows of this earthly vale. They 
 are persons of fine moral infltience, men of salutary tendencies 
 of various kinds. Tiiese are the obstacles which '' Erskine" 
 tells me stand in the path of all who would mak'e successful war 
 against this dark frateioity, the gamesters. Be seems to have 
 a genuine admiration for these wouderftd individuals, who have 
 so many alluring qualities. He should remember that, by all 
 these attractifuis and arts, these men simply tnako their victims 
 the more numerous and unsuspecting. These shining accom- 
 plishments are a part of the instruments these persons use in car- 
 rying on their work f>f ruin. Has "Erskine" forgotten the 
 pithy saying of l^ord Bacon, concerning the gamester, that "the 
 greater master he is in his art, the worse man he is "? Has he 
 forgotten tlie gamester Mr. Law described, the slippery man, 
 who ran away with a lady's daughter, ''a man of great beauty, 
 who in dressmg and dancing has no superior"? Has he for- 
 gotten tbe elegant "Charles Price," the forger, who played the 
 gentleman so well, and preyed on his fellow men through a long 
 hfe, and at last to escape his mental agony and shame, hung 
 himself in Tothill prison? Did Price's superior manners redeem 
 him from the execration of his countrymen? If "Erskine" is 
 
35 
 
 a lawyer, does he not know that the law, which is the '' perfec- 
 tion of reason," gives a man no credit fi>r his accomplishments, 
 if he be a A'iolator of the law? Has he never read of that capi- 
 tal fellow, Isaac Dnmas of Oxfordshire? Hesniig his song well, 
 told a good story, was apt at a sentnnent, drank freely, so that at 
 the cinbs of the day— who hut he I The ladies, of conrse, occu- 
 pied his atter)tion, and he became so great a favoriie, that ha 
 took to tJie road to consolidate his ascendancy — for he was ^e«e- 
 rous. He woidd have done very well to rank among the wor- 
 thies mentioned by "Krskine," but the men of Oxford hung 
 him up by his neck, agreeable as he was. I can commend 
 "Dumas' " history to *' J?irskine\s" meditations. He has read 
 the great poet, let him peruse Gloster's soliloquy : 
 
 '•Why I ran smile, and miirdor, while I smile; 
 
 And cry content, to that wiiirh ijrieves my heart; 
 
 And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, 
 
 And frame my face to all occasions. 
 
 I'll drown more sailors than the nicrmaid shall; 
 
 I'll slay more gazers than the hasilisk; 
 
 I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, 
 
 Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, 
 
 And, like a Simon, take another Troy. 
 
 1 can add colors to the Chameleon; 
 
 Change shapes willi Proteous, f ^r advantage, 
 
 And set the Miird'rous Machiavel to school, 
 
 Can I do this, and cannot get a crown ?" 
 
 Such ethereal, polished enemies of their race, sir, have not un- 
 freqnently been seen in this world of oin-s. These beautiful 
 leopards, with their shining spots and silken coat, have often 
 roamed the earth without a cage, and there ever have been some 
 men. who thought they were too pretty and graceful in their mo- 
 tions to be put within bars, or anywise hindered in their fearful 
 roamings. They Avere so pleasant — with all the blood around 
 each month and dripping from their claws. ''Erskine" ought 
 to indulge in no laudatory languageof these mortal f()es of wives 
 and cradled babes, and aged, palsied mothers, whose husbands, 
 fathers and sons are in the jaws of these monsters, crunched to 
 death. The shining qualities of such beings, used as they aro 
 to aid their ruinous emprise, become glistening vice^j and men 
 should hate their very (orms and shadows with a mortal hatred. 
 '^Erskine" quotes from the Bible now and then, as he goes 
 upon his way, in his letters. Does he find anything in the ser- 
 mons or conversations of the Saviour of the world like an eulogy 
 of the vicious, even f)r the sake of argument? Have gentle- 
 manly manners in gamesters, here and there, anything worthy 
 of a moment's thought, when men are discussing the methods 
 of checking the depredations of these sleek savages — <' these 
 wolves in sheep's clothini^ ;•■' 1 know "Eiskiiio" does not con- 
 sider hiinseli' the apologist for gamblers; but, when he descauta 
 
8® 
 
 on the siiperiorvirtnes of members of this heaven-cursed company, 
 does not every gamester feel that he may be virtuous and a gamester 
 still? Does not every youth, who reads his hicubrations, take into 
 his mind the tliought ho may game to his heart's content, and yet 
 be a ^Mhorough gentleman," <' stand high in private and public 
 confidence," and be in benevolence a philanthropist, and in his 
 munificence a prince? Who does not see that the effe-^t of this 
 is and must be evil, and only evil? How closely does this re- 
 semble the course described in .Scripture of the man who " scat- 
 ters firebrands, arrows and death," and of him '' who leadeth his 
 neighbor astray, and saith, am not I in sport?" When " Ers- 
 kine" tells gamblers that members of their foul craft have been 
 men of almost every virtue under heaven, does this not satisfy 
 such persons that a gambler is not necessarily an inmioral man; 
 that he is not immoral simply because he is a gamester? When 
 this writer tells these men that Apostles gambled, can he expect 
 them to desire superior virtue to the Apostles; or that the young 
 men, whose fate in this thing, at this moment, is, perhaps, ba- 
 lanced on a needle's point, will not be content to game deeply, 
 if they think they shall be no worse than Apostles? If " Ers- 
 kine" is, indeed, a lover of tfie public virtue and happiness, he 
 ought surely to weigh well his words, lest he should bring into 
 being results at which his very heart would turn sick. He speaks 
 of his sons; he would be wise, perhaps, to remember that, in 
 teaching such a doctrine, in regard to inspired Apostles, he may 
 be sowing in the minds of those sons seeds which shr.ll spring 
 up and grow into a harvest of woe for them and him. 
 
 What is the meaning, Mr. Editor, of* all this parade about the 
 liberaHty of gamblers; the gentleman tells me, that these men 
 give thousands oftlollars to individuals and to churches. Would 
 he receive from any man, f()r a gift at Christmas, money made 
 out of " a vice of no ordinary magnitude "? If " Erskine" has 
 a passion for building churches, would he receive assistance, 
 from such men, to pay for their erection? I think, sir, it would 
 evince, in any one, a very great ignorance of the laws of Provi- 
 dence, to expect a heavenly blessing, on a church edifice, built 
 with ill-gotten gains, its every stone cemented with the tears and 
 blood of the widow and the f&dierless. I will do <« Erskine" 
 the credit to suppose, that, on reflection, he would not receive 
 this cankered gold, even from the lilly hand of the finest of these 
 murderers. The liberality of gamblers ! In one very obvious 
 sense, sir, this seenung virtue is the fruit of the life-long vice of the 
 individual whoshows it. <' The substance of the diligent, (says 
 Solomon) is precious," that is, the working man, knows the 
 value of money because he has toiled hard to procure it. Such 
 a man deals wisely with his means, either giving or retaining 
 them prudently, Cut the gamester secures his gold without toil, 
 
fills hi!3 coffers, out of what be calls ^^play," and therefore will 
 be more likely to part with money easily, whether wisely or un- 
 wisely. His apparent exrellence is the off>pring of a real vice. 
 I mean in very considerable measure. If there is any true 
 generosity, in the heart of such a man, it is a puzzling problem 
 to reconcile it with the rest of his character. Half tlie time, if 
 not irmro, liberality in such men is the mere effect of a desire to 
 inipress others with the idea, that the donors are good, kind fel- 
 lows., who do not care for money and woidd not defraud a per- 
 son, no, not on any acconnt. Indeed, they would help a poor 
 man, instead of injuringhim. The deed of charity is witb them, 
 in a large number of cases, a mere intended offset to the general 
 cruelty of their ingenuous lives. If this man '• Prindle" in Sa- 
 vannah, mentioned by ^'Erskine" would have ''dried every 
 tear" "in this vale of tears" if he could, why did he go on in 
 a life which caused so many tears to be streamitig down the 
 scalded cheeks of misery / Why did he pass his whole career 
 in opening the fountains of mothers' and children's sorrow, and 
 unlocking the ciiamhers of their groans ? But I must not dwell, 
 Mr. Editor, on this pernicious ilea any longer. 
 
 "Erskine" tell us, that siK.h men stand in the path of my 
 argument; that a gambler in Richmond, one in Savannah, and, 
 one who graduated some years ago at a university, very wonder- 
 ful men, in his view, these occasionally found men, these scat- 
 tered wrecks of human nature, stand in the highway of ref(">rm. 
 Indeed, sir! If Richmond policemen can force their way into 
 the p'llluted chambers of the gamester, and put these grand gen- 
 tlemen to flielit, through back-doors and small windows, will it 
 be so impossible a thing to repress this evil, and keep it low, as 
 you do any other vice? Detectives in your city have brought 
 the instruments of the black art of these rriminals, into the courts, 
 and showed them befiire all men. They have in some cases 
 brought their persons, and upright, brave judges, either have 
 disposed of their cases, or shortly will do so, punishing them as 
 they most richly deserve. There is nothing dilhcult in the sup- 
 position, that more stringent enactments might be passed against 
 them, and determined officers be f^mnd to arrest them, and reso- 
 lute juries to convict them, and men on the bench, the purity of 
 whose ermine would not be sullied, bv attempts to let such of- 
 fenders escape through the meshes of the law. The ncble and 
 true men of Virgini.i, nine-tenths of whom condemn this prac- 
 tice, can rise in their might, and demand the passage of such 
 laws as shall drive these men out of the land, to Germany or 
 to France, wheie they can make their blood red bread, with 
 none, for a moment, to hinder or make them afraid. Let the 
 public imagination of Virauiia be {Mit in full possession of all the 
 hateful features and sad terrors of llus work of darkness; let the 
 
ss 
 
 people become keenly and thoroughly aroused to the enormities 
 of this thing; let ministers, and editors, and orators at the bar 
 turn it, on every side, that men may see its hideous, devilish 
 shape, and disgusting proportions; pass laws making it a felony 
 and then we shall see who will be allowed to stand in the path 
 of justice and of power. If A,, under '' Erskine's " plan of 
 legal gaming houses, would be deterred from the crime by fear 
 of a felon's cell, why should not A. and B. and C, and all men 
 be restrained from the commission of the offence by dread of the 
 same penalty, if there were vn gaming houses protected by law? 
 High position or personal gifts afford no reliable security to the 
 violators of their nation's laws, and they know it. They would 
 respect the majesty of the law, or they would be made to fall be- 
 fore it. The accomplished and popular William Dodd, perishing 
 on a scaffold, th(nigli the first men in England tried to save him, 
 and Lord Ferrars, going from his castle. to a gibbet, and others like 
 them, may remind ''Erskine" that men " surrounded by a host 
 of friends" cannot always, with impunity, trample on their 
 country's will. I believe, Mr, Editor, no better law, than such 
 an otie as I have now spoken of could be devised. It may be 
 sharp, but many diseases require the knife, and this is one of 
 them. I believe with equal conviction that "Erskine" pro- 
 posal is the most unwise that could possibly be made. I incline 
 to think it meets the reprobation of nearly every lover of virtue 
 and public happiness, and trust the Legislature, at a time when 
 so much depends on their wisdom and firmness, will display an 
 elevation of mind and heart, worthy of its past days, and show 
 this scheme no favor, none^whatever. Let it, in a mad hour, be 
 adopted, and not only will gambling be mightily increased, but 
 that being the parent of many other crimes, every sluice of ini- 
 quity will fly open, and every vice rush unfettered and uncon- 
 trolled through the land. 
 
 '< Erskine " says in his last letter, that he will not answer one 
 argument of mine, as he chooses to call it, viz : an alleged ob- 
 jection to his scheme, to the effect, that if gaming houses are 
 licensed, heavily taxed, and, therefore, iew in number, it would 
 be a restriction on men's liberty, as on account of the distance 
 they would have to go, to reach a lawful gaming house, they 
 would he put to much inconvenience. He represents me as bring- 
 ing this forward as an argument ag.iinst his plan. I offered no 
 such objection. If ''Erskine" read, and thought carefully on 
 what I said, he must have seen that I only mentioned that such 
 would be the case, in order to show one of his arguments to be 
 self contradictory. He had said that ^^ amj law which strikes at 
 the fullest and freest fruition of a pet passion of the million is 
 bound to arouse the combative propensities of the masses, and 
 they will eternally thwart and foil its execution," This was his 
 
assertion, and then he proposes a law, which he says will check. 
 tliis vice most sensibly; yes, "achieve a Solferino victory over 
 gaming." When I was looking at this part of his article, I saw 
 of course the glaring inconsistency of the two things and simply 
 pointed it out. I asked him, hnw this law of his, which he says 
 would cause the gaming houses to be few, and theref(>re remote 
 from vast numbers, how a law so inconvenient, and hampering 
 to the " pet passion of the million " could be carried out, seeing 
 he had said the masses would "eternally thwart and foil " such 
 a law? He writes as if I were objeciing to this restraint on 
 men's liberty, whereas my article showed him, that 1 wanted the 
 penalty of a felony to hang over the head of every njan who 
 gambles. J would like to see barriers of every kind erected 
 around this vice, and merely alluded to "Erskine's" proposed 
 restriction of a vice which he said could not be restrained, in 
 order to exhibit the want of logic which his recommendation in- 
 volved. This was all, sir. And " Erskine's" failure to notice 
 the true issue doubtless had its natural effect on the minds of 
 his readers. It showed them a consciousness, on his part, that 
 the various ideas he has on tliis subject are not joined in a chain 
 which none may break. 
 
 "Erskine's" last complaint, that one kind of gambling, viz: 
 with cards, is denounced and forbidden, while various other 
 sorts — betting, lotteries, etc. — are allowed, I have nothing to do 
 with. The inconsistency is in the laws of the land, not in my 
 position. The discrimination in fiivor of betting, etc., is doubt- 
 less owing to the fact that these are not such fonnidable evils as 
 the odier; but, if my power were eijual to my wishes, they would 
 all be abolished as immoral, often ruinous, and discreditable to 
 any individuals, companies, or especially Churches, that engage 
 in them. "Erskiue's" inquiry, which he puts to me, in rete- 
 rence to the fatal effects of ardent spirits, and his taking for 
 granted that 1 favor the licensing of the drinking houses of the 
 land, is of a piece with many other parts of his letters. My ar- 
 ticle of the 9th had nothing in it to raise so dark a suspicion. 
 One would have supposed that this writer's recent Antediluvian 
 experience would not have been so soon forgotten. The great 
 barrister, sir, whose name " F>skine" has so innocently taken, 
 that eloquent pleader, a man of wider fume and larger powers 
 than his American admirer, wouhl not have used such an as- 
 sumption as this, if by it he could have taken even the strong- 
 holds of a Howard. 
 
 W. M. 
 
 Buchanan, Botetourt Co., Va. 
 
40 
 
 To W. M. 
 
 In my rejoinder to yonr reply to my strictures upon the sup- 
 pression of gambling, I addressed you, instead of the Editor of 
 tlie Whio-. In your surrejoinder, you make this allusion to 
 that fact j^' I (you) had no desire to be identified with the author," 
 &,c. How, sir, does my addressing you superinduce identifica- 
 tion ? Wlio you are, or what you are, I neither know nor care; I 
 was controlled in ihe manner of my reply, by no other earthly 
 consideration than one of convenience, and I shall continue to 
 adhere to it for that reason, and f!>r that reason only. This is a 
 country where all honorable gentlemen occupy a common level, 
 and if you meant to insinuate that I, in respectfully addressing 
 you, have been guilty of taking a liberty, you certainly must be 
 not only desperately in love with yourself, but that ton under 
 circumstances which threaten you in no manner with a rival. 
 In your reply to my first article, you denounced one of my ar- 
 guments as silly enough to " carry its refutation upon its face." 
 One of the illustrations I had employed to elucidate another 
 argument, you satirized in the following style: ''The want of 
 parallelism between the two cases is almost too palpable to allow 
 of discussion. Mark you this is what you said, not what you 
 proved, and in the same vein you added, " The more I read this 
 article, Mr. Editor, the more I am struck with its want of logical 
 coherence and force.'" Then to put a cap upon the climax that 
 would make yonr harlequin uniform complete, in the exordium 
 of your sur-rejoinder, with a sang froid that amounts to a capital 
 joke, yon declare, "I (you) was studious to avoid anything 
 which the most sensitive courtesy could forbid," and then pro- 
 ceed to charge that " Erskine has arrayed himself against me 
 (you) and that certainly in not the most refined wd^Y- Politer 
 terms (you say) surely might have been discovered, after a brief 
 search." I am not in the habit, sir, of arming myself with 
 search warrants, to go upon expeditions of that kind. Moun- 
 tains, 1 know there are of polite terms, in this age of hollow 
 ceiemonics and empty forms, but if one of them never comes to 
 Erskine, Erskine will never go to it. 
 
 Rien de plus estimable que la civilite, mais rien de plus ridicule 
 et de plus a charge que la ceremonie. (Nothing is of more value 
 than complaisance — nothing more ridiculous than mere cere- 
 mony.) 
 
 "Ceremony 
 Was but devised at first to set a gloss 
 On faint deeds, hollow welcomes, 
 Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown." 
 
 The advice Robby Burns gave, when he said 
 
 "Ay free afl' ban', your story tell," 
 
 I generally observe whether it is 
 
 ••— — wi a bosom crony," 
 
41 
 
 or a stranger I am dealing. 1 have long cherished a profound 
 contempt for mere terms. They are not our masters, but are 
 the most abject and degraded of slaves. The selfsame terms 
 may be made to convey good or evil tidings — a compliment or 
 an insnit. 
 
 Afier that imbecile tool of the eunnchs, the Emperor Constan- 
 tius, had imprisoned liis cousin Julian in that ancient resi- 
 dence of the Kings of Cappadocia, tlie castle of Marcellum, near 
 Ceasaria, until he aroused the noble sympathies of the Empress 
 Eusebia, he finally yielded to her sweet persuasion and sent him 
 to reign over the country beyond the Alps, and hold in check 
 the Sarmatians and wild Isaurians, who not seeming to respect 
 any longer the boundaries of the Danube, were threatening to 
 overwhelm Gaul. Julian's success was in every respect signally 
 brilliant. He fmght valiantly and governed mildly. His victo- 
 ries followed one upon another rapidly. When Constantius be- 
 coming jealous of his universal popularity, attempted, under a 
 shallow pretext to rob him of the elite of his Gallic array, where- 
 upon the army rebelled and proclaimed Julian Emperor. At 
 first he feigned a violent hostility to the people, but no doubt 
 that was all fixed up, as Gloster and the Duke of Buckingham 
 fixed up before hand the scene they enacted before the Lord 
 Mayor of Ijondon, when the crown was first tendered to the 
 bloody tyrant. Be that as it may, Julian finally yielded, and 
 wrote to the senate of Rome a very enthusiastic epistle on the 
 subject. In his letter he was rather savage on the reigning Em- 
 peror Constantius. This involved the Senate in no little com- 
 plexity. But they determined to gamble out of it, so they made 
 terms trumps and won every trick. Constantius, it seems, even 
 while he was holding theyDUth of .lulian in prison, nevertheless 
 attended carcfiilly to his thorough education. Here is Gibbon's 
 account of the cute manner in which the Senate played on that 
 fact, " His application to the Senate of Rome which was still 
 permitted to bestow the titles of Itnperial power, Avas agreeable 
 to the t'lrms of the expiring republic. An assembly was sum- 
 moned by Tertiillus, prefect of the city; the epistle of Julian 
 was read, and as he appeared to be master of Italy, his claims 
 were admitted without a dissenting voice. His oblique censure 
 of the innovations of Constantius, and liis passionate invective 
 against the vices of Constantius, were heard with less satisfaction, 
 and the Senate, as if Julian had been present, unanimously ex- 
 claimed ''Re>pect, we beseech you, the author o\' your own 
 fortunes,-' an artful expression which according to the chance of 
 war, might bo difleremly explained; as a manly reproof of the 
 ingratitude of the usurper, or as a flattering confession that a 
 single act of such benefit to the State ought to atone for all the 
 iaihngs of Constantius." 
 
41 
 
 Terms, sir, are mere automatons. Often a change of empha- 
 sis changes the meaning; and you are laboring under an egre- 
 gious hallucination when you imagine that politeness and refine- 
 ment are dependent upon terms — yea, ahiiost as extravagant an 
 hallucination as is that other very eccentric vagary with which 
 you seem to be afllioted, to wit: that as long as you avoid oppro- 
 brious ejMthets you can be guihy of nothing '^'the most sensitive 
 courtesy can forbid." I will dispose of these propositions seria- 
 tim. The significance of terms are often regulated by the con- 
 text, but much more frequently and absolutely by the spirit that 
 prevails throughout the article in which they appear, and to sad- 
 dle them with a strict letter construction, with the aroma of a hbe- 
 ral spirit all arnind and about them, is neither generous or just. 
 
 My rejoinder to you, sir, was characterized not by acrimony, 
 but bonhoiiinde. Throughout every syllable of it kindness was 
 mingled with humor. No man could read it and fail to see that 
 
 " Forward and frolic glee wa& there." 
 
 In such a spirit there is no companionship for discourtesy, 
 and it is not for such a spirit to be trammeled by such cobwebs 
 as are spun into "terms." It rises above the* jargon of the 
 schools like the rising sun looms over the mists upon the moun- 
 tain. That I could have meditated rudeness, it is simply ludi- 
 crously preposterous to assert, and your allusion to it is wholly 
 gratuitous. 
 
 Permit me now. if you please, to call your special attention to 
 the quotations from your articles, I have italicised above. The 
 '■'•terms''' in which ihey are couched are indisputably the very 
 (]uintescence of refined •politeness^ but the direct insinuation, 
 which is tlie inevitable logical sequence of all this polite palaver, 
 IS diat " Erskine" must be a chuckle-headed noodle. If I did 
 NUuiible upon an illustration, wherein ''the want of parallelism" 
 js too pdlpahle to rdloif of discussion," and if I said other things 
 .^o shallow and silly, ihat they were utterly destitute of logical 
 roherence and force, ^^ pitiable indeed must be my mental pu- 
 lility. If tliere was no parallelism where ijou say there is none, 
 it would have been perfectly legitimate for you in that event, to 
 have logically joroi/T?? it, but in no event could it have been pro- 
 )»er or polite for you to liave said. it. Nevertheless, you did say 
 it, and therein committed a flagrant outrage upon the sacred 
 cannons of conmion decency, and you utterly failed to prove it, 
 whereby you have left the readers of the Whig in doubt of which 
 it is you are the more ignorani, sonnd logic or true politeness. 
 1 have heard of people, who it is said, 
 
 "Compound for sins Ihcy are inclined to, 
 By darnniaj tbone Ihey have no mind to." 
 
48 
 
 But it seems to be your singular misfortune to advertise your 
 own follies, in the very flagellations you attempt to give them, 
 in which you seem to luxuriate in ''damning these sins you 
 have a mind to." No donbtit was your own landed estate illus- 
 tration that was pa.-^sing unrecognized in review, before your 
 '' mental eye," when a '' want of parallelism, too palpable to al- 
 low of discussion," involuntarily danced olf from the point of 
 your pen. If it was not, well may 1 exclaim to you in the lan- 
 guage of St. Mathew: ''And why beholdest thou the mote that 
 is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beim that is in 
 thine own eye." 
 
 " Tlio man wlio hopes his bile shall not offend, 
 Should overlook the pimples of his friend.'' 
 
 Notwithstanding, sir, you have presumed to impertinently 
 twit me about my refinement and politeness, I must insist that 
 you stand convicted by the record, of a rudeness rougher than I 
 have yet perpetrated. Your "terms" may be more recherche 
 than mine, but your intentions are less polite, the language you 
 employ belongs to one school of manners and the only interpre- 
 tation of which it is susceptible belongs to another, and between 
 the two there is no aflinity, and cati exist no sympathy. " Your 
 hand is the hand of Ksau, but your voice is the voice of Jacob." 
 But I am beginning shrewdly to suspect that neither j'-our man- 
 ners or logical short comings are fair game for sport. That they 
 are the result of mental and not moral obliquities. Be that as it 
 may, I shall pass from them to a complaint of a much graver 
 character, that 1 am constrained, by a high sense oi public duty, 
 to bring against you, and to me it is a source of painiiil regret 
 that while those sons of mine, to which y«>u made so thoughtful 
 an allusion, are rallying under the Confederate flag to battle, un- 
 til we triumph, or all is over, in defence of the sovereignty of the 
 States, I must be coerced to arraign and convict yuu at the bar 
 of public opinion, of sentiments not only of doubtful modesty 
 and refinement but of even questionable humanity. " Out of 
 thine own tnoTUh will I condenm thee." 
 
 As Terence said, sua sihi ^Indio huncjuguJo, 
 
 Not unlike the unhappy Acteon, you shall be torn to pieces 
 by your own hounds. Here they are, Tray, Blanche, {Sweet- 
 heart, and all the rest. 
 
 "His (Erskiiie's) impatience, as soon as he read my com- 
 ments on his argumeiu. was decidedly interesting, as well to 
 others as to myself, for the simple reason that it caused to pass 
 before the mental eye the image of a breast sticking full of ar- 
 rows," (fcc, and again you say: "In the two letters which 
 'Erskine' has addressed to me he has not succeeded in tugging 
 one of these arrows from his grieved bosom." It is true, then, 
 
4# 
 
 it would seem, that you do not only chuckle with a demoniac 
 joy over what you suppose are the exquisite tortures of my sen- 
 sibilities but ynur ecstacies are redoubled and refined in the proud 
 contemplation of the additional fact that you are the author of 
 my terrible agonies, the illiad of all my Avoes. 
 
 No wonder you emptied the quiver of your envenomed ridi- 
 cule upon tears, and the poor drivelling simpleton whose ambi- 
 tion could soar no higher than to lead him among the distressed, 
 in search for tears to "dry up." It is a self-evident proposition, 
 upon the face of the record you have made, that you cherish a 
 withering scorn for the lachrymose infirmity. On your stony 
 heart, no doubt, drops of human woe could not descend, from 
 pity pleading eyes, bitter enough to produce any other effect 
 than is produced by the pattering of the wintry rain that freezes 
 as it falls upon the mountain rock Your savage ferocity and 
 irrepressible vanity has but one parallel in history. When the 
 question was asked — 
 
 " Who killed cock-robin? 
 I, said the sparrow, 
 With my bow and arrow, 
 I killed cock-robin." 
 
 Anybody can see that that sparrow felt his oats, that he fully 
 realized the vast renown he had won, and, moreover, that he 
 had such a devouring passion for horn-blowing, that, indelicate 
 as it might be, he could not refrain from giving his own trumpet 
 a toot. No man that ever had within him the shadow of a 
 soul, could fail to enjoy the intensely interesting spectacle that 
 sparrow made in the felicitous conceit, of which he was evi- 
 dently possessed, of the dazzlingly magnificent character of the 
 achievement, for the honors of which he stood before the whole 
 world wittiout a rival. But, it seems, he is to have a rival in 
 ultimata, one who so emulates his taste and style, that he has 
 determined to travel to eternal renown with him on the same 
 river, or at least to float, 
 
 " Mingling with his fame forever." 
 
 Accordingly, in the same vein, the sparrow spoke you too publish 
 the fact that you, too, have a '' bow and arrow," and that, more- 
 over, it has not been idle. Here is a parallel not obnoxious to 
 your terrible anathemas against parallels that are not parallels. 
 That f)nd conceit, which was to the sparrow a source of joy, 
 was to others a source of merriment, and that is literally and 
 precisely the history of your case. He, no doubt, honestly be- 
 lieved he was hatched to he cock-robin's slayer, and you, no 
 doubt, as honestly believe that you were burn to become Ers- 
 kine's annihilator. He seem to think that there was nothing 
 indelicate in blowing his own horn, and here again you have 
 
45 
 
 followed close in the footsteps of your immortal prototype. He 
 tells us that his weapon was a bow and arrow. You tell us 
 identically the same story about your weapon. He said enough 
 to prove that he was a bloody-minded, bloodthirsty sparrow, and 
 you have said enough lo establish your claims, too, to a san- 
 guinary mind and appetite. He was endowed with a rare de- 
 gree of courage, and 1 rtitend to assert and prove, Monday, that 
 you possess that splendid quality to a degree almost verging upon 
 a mania.' He was rhapsodical in his allusion to what he had 
 done with his bow and arrow. You are extatic in your allusion 
 to what you imngine you have done with yours. He was full 
 of ambition. His speech proves it. You are full of ambition. 
 Your speeches prove it. He is immortal, and for i/inf reaso?i you 
 imll be. Do yon think, sir, ''the want of parallelism between 
 the two cases is almost too palpable to allow of discussio7i,^^ or 
 is not the parallelism itself, entirely too palpable to admit of dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 Mark you, I maintain that in blowing your own horn you 
 have violated no canon of lex scripta. Kgotism and swaggering 
 belong to the rights of persons, as Blackstone would class them. 
 So give an uncurbed licence to your penchant for horns and 
 whenever you want to blow, blow. There is no law to make 
 you afraid. I have been poking a little fun at you about it, only 
 because I felt under obligations to Publeus Syri's for thoughts 
 he bequeathed to me, from which 1 have often derived great 
 pleasure, and as he once said qui svipsum laudat cito deiisoiem 
 ijivcidt, (he who sounds his own trumpet will soon meet with 
 those who will turn him into ridicule,) I determined he should 
 not, if 1 could prevent it, be caught, in your case, in a fib. 
 
 Having disposed, in my poor way, of your facetious eccentri- 
 cities about refinement, modesty and politeness, I will bid you 
 adieu, hoping that we will meet again next Monday, when I am 
 afraid 1 sliall be compelled to expose the miserable bad purposes 
 to which you prostitute some of your very best qualities. Until 
 then, however, joax vobiscuiri — a tranquil pillow to you. 
 
 ERSKINE. 
 
 To W. M. 
 
 I promised on Saturday to prove to-day, that in the possession 
 of that shining quality called courage, '• yourself alone could be 
 your only parallel." There is, I am aware, a desperation re- 
 sembling courage, of which it is said cowards are capable; but 
 I entertain not the slightest apprehension that 1 have mistaken 
 the one for the other. It is generally in the dernier resort that 
 we meet with desperation at all. It is the ollspring of mental 
 
46 
 
 and physical convulsions and the inseparable companion of em- 
 ergencies and extremities. When all is at stake it performs the 
 same office courage does in quest of excitement, the redress of 
 injuries or the support of the right. Now, my opinion is, that 
 of late yf^n have only been in quest of a little excitement; but 
 in that adventure it certainly must be admitted that you have ex- 
 hibited a courage it would take the desperation of a craven, when 
 his very existence was at stake, to riv^al. A Greek philosopher of 
 eminence once defined courage to be an indifference to conse- 
 quences. If this be a correct definition, the memory of Chevalier 
 Bayard may well tremble for its laurels, and the star of the heroic 
 Conde, as well as that of the brave Merci, to whose memory he paid 
 so delicate and thrilling a tribute in the monument he erected over 
 his ashes, as well as that of the ill-fated Ney, who won at the 
 cannon's mouth the imperishable sobriquet of the ^'bravest of 
 the brave," must all pale before the dazzling splendors and tran- 
 scendent effulgence of this bran new luminary that has only but 
 yesterday shot into its orbit upon the horizon of Botetourt; for, 
 my dear sir, from your first appearance in this controversy, you 
 have exhibited a morbid indifierence to consequence altogether 
 sufficient to put the martyrs of stoicism themselves to the blush. 
 In the first place, you have deliberately, roundly and emphati- 
 cally asserted that 1 have assumed positions and made issues I 
 never assumed or made, all to furnish an excuse to say something 
 that would have been brighter than lightning or sharper than a 
 two-edged sword, if it only had not been a simple game of bat- 
 tle-door and shuttle-cock, where, as in the play, the author fixes 
 up the speeches of both parties. How could a man of your 
 native astuteness fail to see that you never could perpetrate such 
 folly and escape detection 7 And if you cooly made up your 
 mind to become a public butt for the amusement of the ^'lookers 
 on in Vienna," I must be permitted to insist that therein you do 
 exhibit a stoically heroic indifference to consequences. From 
 the numerous and enormous blunders yon are continually making 
 and repeating, the inference is a fair one, that while it is proba- 
 ble you are a laborious reader, it is equally certain that you are 
 only a superficial student, and that after having flitted through 
 and over a thousand pages you resemble a man who has traveled 
 a long journey with closed eyes and ears. He returns, of course^ 
 with a traveled body, but not a traveled mind. He, however, 
 must have gotten the benefit of fresh air and exercise, whereas 
 you will have /osMhose benefits without acquiring any equiva- 
 lent in lieu thereof — but, on the contrary, have acquired an ha- 
 bitual superficiality, and the result is you simply read every thing 
 and seriously study nothing, and yet you presume, upon a mere 
 cursory glance, to dispose in solemn form and put at rest finally 
 and forever, questions of whatever gravity and magnitude may 
 
47 
 
 chance to come before you. This, no man, without the courage 
 of a lion, could ever dare to do. But I must do you the justice 
 to add, that as a full recompense for your uniform habit, of never 
 giving to other men's thoughts more than a superficial glance, 
 you are knightly and considerate enough never to bother other 
 men with thoughtsof your own, deamnding more than you give. 
 (Such munificence is wortliy of a Prince, such benevolence of 
 a phiIantliropist,and as nothing ismon; proverbial than that gene- 
 rosity and courage are inseparable concomitants, it furnishes ad- 
 <iitional evidence of your redoubtable pluck. In the last two 
 letters I had the temerity to address you, I presented to you se- 
 ven^ fair issues, and how did you meet them. Precisely as it is 
 saitT a fellow in a buggy once behaved, when he met on the high- 
 way a six horse team. The road was narrow and out of the 
 beaten path, on either side it was boggy, so the man undertook 
 to bully the teamster, and in an explosion of dignified indigna- 
 tion, demanded, "Are you not going to getoutot my way, sir?" 
 What will you do if I don't, quietly asked the wagoner? What 
 will I do? why, sir, I will soon show you what I will do ! A 
 moment at suspense elapsed, whereupon the wagoner, with an 
 apparently very calm indifference to the consequences, replied, 
 " Well, sir, what will ii be? Why, sir, retorted the proprietor 
 of the one horse establislunent, if you do not get out of my way 
 instautlj^, I will certainly get out of yours. 
 
 I threw down to you ^'^^^o after gage, which you, instead of 
 picking up, play on me the buggy tiick and go dodging around 
 my six horse team of facts, and it is the natural result of that 
 superficial way you have of reading everything and bobbing 
 around generally. 
 
 You seem to look all around an issue without ever seeing it, 
 and then you write all around it, without ever touching it. In 
 this you remind me of a young orator I once knew. He had a 
 bosom crony, in wfiose criticisms he had great confidence. Alter 
 having made, on one occasion, one of liis 'Tousers," as soon as 
 lie closed he caught the eye of his friend, which he fancied 
 beamed with more than its ordinary light, and mistaking ii for 
 approbatiim, he rushed up to him and exi^laimed, ''Now, Tom, 
 what liave you got to say to that speech?" ^'O," replied Tom, 
 " 1 have no hesitation in saying, rmd I say it boldly, it is the 
 greatest speech you ever did deliver, and will remain to your 
 dying day the great speevdi of your lite. In truth, it has but one 
 solitary fault" "0,iny beloved friend, you will strangle me 
 with joy. Only one faulll and that too comes from you, who 
 have lieretofire had a tlKMisand faults to find with my speeches. 
 How I mu.st have improved! Who will rieny, now, that I am a 
 growing and rising man' Only nno f-mll! Do tell me, Tom, 
 what is that one, I dare say it is a small one, and I may easily 
 
48 
 
 correct it." "O," replied Tom, '^yoii never touched the sub- 
 ject?" Now, (hose last two articles of yours in the Whig, [ 
 dare say, are far better articles than Tom's friend's speech was a 
 speech, but they were afflicted with precisely the same disorder. 
 I presented yon with facts, which it was for you to admit or deny, 
 and you did neither, but, dodging an issue, failed, exactly as 
 Tom's friend did, to touch the subject. Nevertheless, I enjoyed 
 your articles hugely; it was plain enough to be seen that you 
 "was in a weaving way," and "spent your figures free," and 
 to me, it has always been a source of unalloyed delight, to look 
 on at others when they are warming up with the enjoyment of 
 themselves. But there is one other additional evidence of your 
 Cassarean pluck, that I have not yet adduced; I allude to thfi in- 
 domitable obstinacy and dashing boldness, with which you 
 couch your lance and poise your speai- in defence of any blunder 
 you may have made per fas et ne fas, you remind me of that 
 chivalric wight described by the poet when he said : 
 
 " He strives for trifles and for toys contends, 
 And then in earnest, what he says, defends." 
 
 In this you evince a nobility of nature that is God-like. It 
 makes me forget and forgive all your faults, and want to 
 hug you. Some people might be found vulgar enough to christen 
 this stupidity, but I have a better, and a holier name for it, to 
 wit, humanity. No man that ever saw in a family of children, 
 one who was a cripple, blind, deaf, mute, or deformed, could 
 have failed to notice that the poor unfortunate little one was the 
 pet of Its parents. To their warm and tender bosoms ihaj drew 
 it nearer, and over its wayward wanderings they \\'atched with 
 a fonder care, and in this they exemplified a God like humanity; 
 and when you draw near to your poor little blind, deaf, mute, 
 deformed and crippled arguments and blunders, and draw j?-our 
 glitteriing steel boldly m their defence, you do not only esta- 
 blish the fact which none can dare dispute, that you have a su- 
 })erabur)dance of pluck, but you emulate the example of the no- 
 ble fathers and mothers, who love their cripples best; and 1 say, 
 you thereby challenge the admiration, not only of Botetourt, but 
 "of the balance of mankind." I am now through with my alle- 
 gata, and will proceed at once to mj probata, and as my heart is in 
 a soft mood now toward you, about your little cripples, I will com- 
 mence on them; and I prruuise you that whenever i lay my hands 
 on their tender lindis and helpless forms, I will studiously avoid 
 everything to which the most sensitive parent could object. The 
 first one I shall notice is one of your eldest, if not your first 
 born. It is your ipse dixit that France and Germany are infidel 
 nations. 1 plead the general issue of, not guilty, to this count 
 iu your indictment, and did suppose that you would, upon re- 
 
49 
 
 flection, (by the way do you ever do that thing — reflect?) enter a 
 nolle prosequi, blow your horn, (as you are so fond of horn blow- 
 ing,) and c;ill ofl' your dogs, Tray, Blanche, Sweetheart, and all the 
 rest. But that superficial way you have of looking at matters, 
 united with that ennobling atfortinn you cherish for your de- 
 formed offspring, rallies you before the country to demand a trial. 
 Well, you shall have it. And the first question with which I 
 confront you is, when were France and Germany infidel nations? 
 Tliere is but one way to ascertain, and that is from the musty 
 tomes of history. On this issue, you hold the affirmative, and 
 are bnund to produce the proof; and proceeding upon the pre- 
 sumiMion that you imagine you have done so, I will proceed to 
 introduce rebutting evidence. In the first place, then, literature 
 istheonlyoutletcivilized infidelity has. Infidels have no churches 
 through which to disseminate tlieir pernicious doguias. So they 
 Hit the fli'od-gatps of the press, and deluge the land with essays,' 
 poems, pamphlets and plays. Then we will have to look into the 
 history o{ French and German literature, to ascertain the extent 
 of their infidelity. \Ve will commence with France. Beginning 
 with the \niddle ages, the literary history of France may be di- 
 vided into three periods: The first- extends from 1000 to 1500, 
 and includes the literature of the Troubadours and the Trou- 
 veres. If a great infidel lived in this age, what was his name? 
 If he had followers, how many? it was iu this age, you must 
 remember, sir, that the people of both France and Germany were 
 wrought into such a furor of religious enthusiasm hv Peter the 
 Hermit, and other powerful orators, who swept the whole face of 
 all Kurope with a srorm of religious eloquence, ui-til they rallied 
 under the bnnncr of the cross pious soldiers enough to sack Je- 
 rusalem, and ft was in this period that ntmierous religious sects 
 sprung up in France and Germany. One I remember originated 
 in the district of Albi, iu the I'ith century, and was called the 
 Albigeneses. It resembled somewhat, the Protestantism of this 
 day, and was tolerated atid y)rotected by the Court of Toulouse. 
 But as this sect augmented and began to flourish. Innocent III,, 
 who was the reigning Roman Pope at that time, declared war 
 against it, and for the balance of that period France and Ger- 
 many were under the unceasing scourge of theological wars. 
 
 'Twas in this period and towards the close of it«that that re- 
 nowned ecclesiastic Froissart ffourished, as also did Phillippede 
 Commiues; and it was in this period that religion was of r.u -h uni- 
 versal and absorbing interest to the common people, that the Pil- 
 grims — who returned from the H^ly Land — resolved to give a 
 dramatic exhibition under the litleof the Fiaternity of the Passion. 
 One of the pieces they enacted was the history of our Saviour from 
 his cradle to his sepulchre. It was entirely too long for one re- 
 preseiiuitiou and was, therefore, contiaued from day to day, and 
 
50 
 
 was attended by nniltitudes of people. Here, then, is conclusive 
 proof that, at this period, France and Germany were intensely 
 christian nations. 
 
 The second period extends from 1500 to 1700, and includes 
 the revival of the study of classical literature, or the Renaissance 
 and of the golden age of French literature under Louis the 14th. 
 IC a great infidel rose or reigned in this period, 
 
 " What's his name and where's his hamc." 
 
 In this period history tells us that the downfall of Constantino- 
 ple promoted the revival of ancient literature; of the invention 
 of printing, of the discovery of a new world, of the decline of 
 feudalism and the consequent elevation of the middle classes, 
 hut nothing about infidelity. The Renaissance and Reformation 
 went lovingly hand in hand along the banks of the Rhine and 
 Seine. Among those who eagerly imbibed the spirit of both 
 stood the lovely and loveable Princess Marguerite de Valoise, 
 elder sister of Francis the First. Her valet-cle-chambre was the 
 poet jMarot. He was a Caivanistic theologian^ and in his holy 
 hymns and poems were happily blended familiarity, propriety, 
 elegance and grace, and they were universally read. 
 
 But it was in Calvin that the Reformation, and in Rabelais that 
 the Renaissance found their representative types. Yet very 
 many other intellectual, moral and religious lights flourished in 
 this period, whose rays are still beaming on us through the haze of 
 time. Among them you will find Balzac, Voiture, Menage, Scu- 
 dery, Chaplain, Costart, Conrad, the AbbeBossuet, and Cardinal 
 Richelieu. And it v/as about this time that that great original 
 and powerful thinker, Descartes, opened and blazed the way for 
 Lock, Newton and Liebnilz. And it was in this same period that 
 Bosseret, Bourdelone and Hassalon, three of the most powerful 
 pulpit orators the Catholic church ever produced, llourished. 
 Bosseret addressed the conscience tlirough the imagination, Bour- 
 dalone through the judgment, and Massaion through the feelings. 
 Ai)d it was these two centuries that produced that great geoma- 
 ll'ician Pascal, those eminent lawyers Patru, Pellesson, Cochin 
 and D'Aguesseau, those moral piiilosophers, Rochefaucald and 
 La Bnizere, those great Authors of pure romance, Madame La- 
 fayette and Fenelon, that incomparable letter writer, Madame de 
 Sevjgne, those celebrated dramatists and artists, Racene and Cor- 
 nell le, and those perspicuous and able historians, Bosseret de 
 Retz and St. Simon. They were the ruling and masterspirits 
 of this period. Which one of them was an infidel? 
 
 The tlhrd period extends from 1700 to the present day, and if 
 France and Germany are to be convicted of national infidelity, 
 it must be in this period or not at all, and I am free to admit that 
 meji wonderfully gifted did flourish in France and Germany in 
 
5X 
 
 this period, who were infidels, but their infidelity was not the 
 source of their popularity, but their popularity prevailed even 
 over their infidelity. Skepticism had its origin in the criticism 
 of Laniott, who was only a htcrary skeptic. He raised the standard 
 ot revolt against the worship of antiquity, and would have de- 
 throned poetry itself on the ground of its inutihty. Thus skep- 
 ticism commenced by established literary doctrines, becoming 
 matters of doubt and controversy. High among the skeptics 
 about this time, stood the Baron de Montesquieu, His popu- 
 larity was commensurate with his fame; but to what was he in- 
 debted for that fame. By no means to those ^^ Persian Letters," 
 but in truth it was based upon his '^ Spirit of Laws," which it 
 is accorded on all hands is the greatest monument of human 
 wisdom erected in the ISth century. History says 'Mt is a pro- 
 found analysis of law in its relation with government, customs, 
 climate, rehgion and commerce." The book is inspired with a 
 spirit of justice and humanity. But the great apostle of infi- 
 delity in France was Voltaire, and his popularity knew no limit 
 below the stars. But to what was it attributable? Certainly not 
 to his skepticism, for he was imprisoned three times in the Bas- 
 tile and three times had to liy from France on account of his 
 skepticism. Wliat then was the secret of his immense popu- 
 larity. It was his poems, essays, dramas and wit. Over his 
 dark thoughts his wit played, like lightning over dark clouds, 
 and over France the corruscations of his genius flashed for half 
 a century with a vividness that dazzled and infatuated all classes 
 of society, irrespective of creeds. And the thunders of the Vati- 
 can that expatriated the infidel to-day would be lost to-morrow, 
 amid the louder thunders of the popular Catholic voice calling 
 home the wit like the whistle of a sailor boy is lost amid the 
 roar of the. tempest. When "Zaire" was played, all Catholic 
 France rushed to the theatre, and the greatest honor he ever re- 
 ceived came from a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm, with which 
 he was once welcomed upon entering the theatre while they were 
 performing one of his plays. He had for a long time been ab- 
 sent from Paris, and when the eye of the audience fell upon the 
 bowed and venerable form of the great author of not only a 
 thousand and one happy hours of glowing interest they had en- 
 joyed, but of the mental repast that was then being spread be- 
 Ibre them, their enthusiasm broke through every restraint, and 
 burst upon him like a tornado. Old men put their arms atTec- 
 tionatoly around him. Beautiful women poured upon him a re- 
 freshing shower of passionate kisses, and all joined in taking him 
 vietarnns\o the stage, and enthroning him upon it, and weaving 
 round his brow a wreathe of living laurels. Voltair wept with 
 joy. But this was no tribute to his infidelity. It was the ho- 
 mage a Catholic people delighted ty pay to tiausccadeut geiiius. 
 
52 
 
 His society was courted by Frederick tlie Great and all the great 
 intellects and wits of Europe. But infidelity had nothing to do 
 with all this. I know that a literary society was formed in 
 France, the avowed purpose of which was to smite down re- 
 ligi'in, and that its members frequently assembled in the salons 
 of Mesdames du Defiant, Geoffrin, de I't^spinasse and Baron 
 d'Holback, and that for a time their doctrines spread like a ma- 
 laria, blasting religion and morals te:i;iporarily. To this society 
 belonged tliat cynic and sophist, Diderot, D'Alembert, Rosseau, 
 Condillac, the sentimentahst, Grim, the philosopher, Helvetius, 
 and the malicious Marmontel, but right here I wish to call your 
 special attention to three prominent facts. The infidels if they 
 ever had anything to do with the laws, never licensed gambling; 
 that at no period was France ever under the sceptre of an infidel 
 King or Emperor, and that the communicants of the Catholic 
 church did always and do now outnumber all other denomina- 
 ti, including the infidels in France, and if this does not prove 
 that France never was and is not an infidel nation, then facts 
 are impotent and argument useless. Moreover, it is well known 
 to every student of history out of Botetourt that infidelity has 
 run its course in France and is now prostrated with the dry rot. 
 Necker, tlie father of Madam de Stael, drew his bright blade 
 on the side of the church when the storm of infidelity was at its 
 wildest, and around him there gathered a formidable host of pow- 
 erfnl writers, and they kept the banner of the cross flying from 
 the masthead of the church when the beach was being ihickly 
 strewn with the wreck of infidel crafts. Madame de Stael and 
 Chauterbriand fought the battle of the church in literature, 
 Maine de Biran and Royer-Collard in philosophy, and Benjamin 
 Constant in political science, and to no inconsiderable extent they 
 did sncceed in neutralizing the baleful influences of .Voltair and 
 his school, and from that day to this, infidelity has been on the 
 wane in France. A Catholic sits on her throne, Catholics sit in 
 her councils and Catholics frame her laws, and now what do you 
 take by your allusion to infidel France, when it eventuates that 
 France never was and is noi ivficlcl France, and that when there 
 were more infidels there than there were at any other time, gam- 
 thug was not hcensed,and now, when they do not wield over the 
 vine-clad hills one shadow of influence, it is. To Germany and 
 the balance of your crippled and deformed brats I will look to- 
 morrow. 
 
 ERSKINE. 
 
 To W. M. 
 
 Your sweeping charge of infidelity against France was made 
 still more sweeping by the inclusion of Germany. Germany is 
 that portion of central Europe which lies between the Adriatic 
 
58 
 
 and the Baltic. It has an ancient and a well written history. 
 It has produced its full quota of the great thinkers, writers 
 and travellers of Europe. The arts and sciences have always 
 had, and have today, more votaries and patrons there than they 
 have elsewhere, and Avhat is still more remarkable it always has 
 been, and still continues to be, the most intensely religious spot 
 on the whole face of the civilized globe. Go back, if you please,, 
 to the year A. D. 360, when IJlphilas gave the Goths his trans- 
 lation of the Bible, and come along up through the reign of 
 Chailemagne, and the Suabian age to the House of Hapsburg, 
 and you will find no footprints of infidelity on the surface of 
 German history. The Germans poured out their blood like wa- 
 ter and laid down their lives like martyrs, to establish in Ger- 
 many not only a religion, but Me Protestant religion. The most 
 important works of the I4th and l.5th centuries are the writings 
 of German monks which kindled and kept alive a religious fervor 
 among tiie middle and lower classes, whereby a whole na- 
 tion was kept waiting to receive and made ready to support 
 a Reformer. Tliey represented religion as consisting in the 
 sentiments of the heart, rather than in doctrines. Their main 
 principle was that piety depended not on ecclesiastical forms, but 
 consisted m the abandonment of all selfish passions. Tauler, in 
 1361 , codified, the sentiments of these monks in a volume which 
 he christened ''German Theology." Luther, in a preface to 
 this book, centuries subsequently, expresses his admiration of its 
 contents and asserts that he had found in it the germs of the Re- 
 formation, and it was here on German soil, long after the star of 
 the Suabian dynasty, under, the divine light of which the Cru- 
 saders flourished, had gone down in gloom and blood and the 
 sweet tones of the Suabian lyre had died away, that that self- 
 same Reformation was ushered into this breathing world. 'Twas 
 in the I61I1 century when the Emperor and the Pope were in all 
 the plenitude of their power. The armies of the one were drawn 
 by conscriptions from Spain, Austria, Naples, Sicily and Bur- 
 gundy, while with his Inquisition and his thunderbolts of ex- 
 comnnmicatinn the other coercedthe priests and monks to rally 
 under his banner from all parts of the Christian world. Against 
 these formidable powers, a poor, obscure and nameless Augus- 
 tine monk came forth from his closet in the small university of 
 Wittenburg, with no treasures in his coffers nor arms of any kind 
 in his hands save the Bible alone, and in a clear manly voice de- 
 fied the Emperor, the Pope, the clergy, and the nobility. And 
 around him gathered Melancthon, Manuel Zwingle, Fishart, 
 Franck, Arnd and .Tacob Beehn, and they impressed the litera- 
 ture and theology of that age with their master's spirit and name; 
 and most properly, for he was not only the most pronn'nent cha- 
 racter of that age but he was tlic exponent of their national feel- 
 
54 
 
 ing and gave shape and utterance to thoughts and sentiments 
 which had been before universally felt but obscurely expressed, 
 and his inflnence was acknowledged in almost every department 
 of German life. " The retnoddeling of the Gorman tongue may 
 be said to h.ave gone hand in hand with the Reformation, and it 
 is to Luther more than any other it owes its rapid progress. His 
 translation of the Bible was the great work of the period, and 
 gives to him the deserved title of creator of German prose. The 
 Scriptures ii:e?-e now familiarly read hy all classes and never has 
 their beautiful simplicity been more admirably rendered," In 
 the 17th centuiy flourished Opitz, Pufendorf, Kepler, Arnold 
 and Paul Gerhard, the sacred hymns of some of whom are still 
 heard in the churches of Germany. In the 18th century Klop- 
 stock, Lessing, Weiland and the eminent theologian Herder were 
 the great German theological and literary lights. Early in the 
 present century Goethe and Schiller made their appearance. The 
 names of their cotemporaries and successors like the arrows of 
 the Persians at Thermopyl^ would make a cloud that would ob- 
 scure the Sun, and among them I dare say there might be found 
 an occasional transcendentalist who is a metaphysical infidel but 
 the infidels of Germany are few in number and morally impo- 
 tent. They have no representative type who is a master spirit. 
 For the respect that you have for the memory of Martin Luther 
 and William of Orange and for a land over which war raged for 
 thirty years that Protestant Christianity might flourish there, I do 
 beseech you retract your scandalous calumny against Germany. 
 
 There may be, in Germany, to-day, a few infidels, but they 
 cannot mould and fashion the nationality of Germany. Hume, 
 Gibbon and Bolingbrooke were infidels, nevertheless, Britton was 
 not an infidel nation. The people of the United States elevated 
 to the Presidency a confirmed skeptic. Were his party all infi- 
 dels? Bring the rule home with which you attempted to damn 
 Germany and France, and the Confederate and United States 
 will have to take a damning too, and Virginia her full share of 
 it. 
 
 Since publishing my first article on this subject, I have ascer- 
 tained that a revenue is drawn from gambling, by the govern- 
 ments both of Spain and Italy. Are they infidel nations? 
 
 In your first article you asserted in unequivocal and unquali- 
 fid terms, that pnblic opinion had put down female gambling. 
 Here is your language: '■' If the gentleman had familiarized him- 
 self with the history of gaming, he would have known that the 
 public opinion, of which he speaks slightingly, as rather inchn- 
 ingthe other side has put an end to female gambling for money .'''' 
 Now, when I proved that females stiU gambled at Saratoga, N. 
 Y., Baden-Baden, and other fashionable resorts in Europe, Avhat, 
 sif; is your reply? Here it is. " Does that refute my statement. 
 
55 
 
 When I speak of Addison and of English opinion as moulded by 
 his writings, that I was extending this influence to Germany, 
 where a dilferent language is used and a diflerent type of civili- 
 zation obtains." Now, just allow me to quietly ask, did elfront- 
 ery ever, in a gambling "hell," or an iniidel AY</o?i, put on a 
 more thorough dare-devil face than this. 
 
 in the iirsl place, nothing is better knowji in the literary world 
 than that the " Spectator" has been translated into the French and 
 German languages, and published in France and Germany, and 
 no doubt has been as generally read in those countries as it has 
 been in England. If so, wliy are not the truths it contains 
 entitled to as nuich weight ni one country as in the other? 
 Doubtless, however, on this card you "coppered" what you 
 supposed to be the extant of the information of Erskine and the 
 public. But I only allude to these facts to show you cannot be 
 jjermitted to wriggle through the loop hole that you think you 
 are squirming out at, for the facts do not occupy a position 
 from which they can be made to screen the spasms your 
 attempt to squeeze through that loop hole has brought on you. 
 Your language in this instance, whether intentionally or fortui- 
 tously, is pointed, perspicuous and comprehensive, and to give 
 it all of its force, you italicised it as I have quoted it italicised, 
 and sir, you did not therein as anybody can see, speak of the 
 suppression of female gambhng "as a general thing," or as a 
 "vice," or among one people more than another, but your asser- 
 tion swept the face of heuiispheres, and literally pulverized the 
 dry bones of the assumed to be, dead habit. And if you 
 only meant to refer to the Anglo Saxon race, or to the sup- 
 pression of a "general, leminine indulgence in tliis vice, the 
 presumption of which you are guilty in attempting to instruct 
 the public before you are capable of saying that which you 
 want to say, is worthy only of your landed estate parallel 
 and logic, your cock sparrow egotism and vanity, and your 
 Botetourt politeness ajid refinement, and liunishes another evi- 
 dence of your chronic superficiality. You do not only read 
 superficially that which others write, but you read your own 
 elTusions in the same way. Now, this is not only at war 
 with true politeness and refinement at home, but is extremely 
 impolitic, for if you M'ill not treat your own offspring with com- 
 mon respect, how can you expect tiie world to do it. And for 
 all the cavalier treatment your mongrel brood of o})inions and as- 
 sertions (of the paternity of an ar^unient up to this time, I be- 
 lieve you to be innocent) may hereafter receive, you will doubt- 
 less be indebted to "the j)ower of your own example." But 
 this sentence is one of your unfortunate progeny, whom I sup- 
 pose you do not care how much I cliastise, for it has deliberately 
 lied on its papa. You say you told it to say one thing, and it 
 
56 
 
 says you told it to say another. Of course the " power of ex- 
 ample" being irresistible, I am bound to and do beheve you. 
 Now, sir, allow me to inform you that the females who gamble 
 at Baden-Baden and elsewhere in Europe, are rarely ever the soft 
 blue eyed beauties of the Teutonic race, but are the more gay and 
 (asfiionable and less religious belles and dames who flit and flut- 
 ter through the same salons in West End and Grosvenor Square, 
 which the wit of Addison once irradiated. In my allusion to 
 the talents and accomplishments of certain gamblers, I did not 
 pretend to speak from personal knowledge. I never saw poor 
 Prindle. 1 did not know the graduate to whom I made allusion, 
 and in speaking of a remarkably brilliant colloquist of this city, 
 I distinctly said -'I am told" such an one resides here, and in 
 alluding to the high position other gamblers occupied tor inte- 
 grity in the confidence of honorable gentlemen here who know 
 them, I spoke of their reputations, and gave no opinion of my 
 own. Yet so superficial was the glance you gave it, or careless 
 the allusion you made to it, that you charge these opinions home 
 upon me as mine. Here, sir, is one of your own " positive state- 
 ments which is entirely without foundation." If you think it 
 amoiuits to a '^mantle," it is yours, and the weather is sug- 
 gestive. 
 
 Already I have been relnctanfly compelled to make more than 
 one allusion to a characteristic of yours, that does not o)]ly ap- 
 pear to be preeminently prominent, but constitutional, to wit, 
 your vanity. But it was '' more in sorrow than in anger" I did 
 it. With you it amounts almost to a fanaticism. So vain are 
 you of your erudition, that, tor the sake of an opportunity to pa- 
 rade your pedantry before the stare of the multitude, you do not 
 hesitate to summon a witness to the stand from the summit of 
 Mt. Parnassus against your own cause. Wlien I saw that quo- 
 tation in i/ow article I marvelled as did the old virtuoso when he 
 saw a fly preserved in ambier. 
 
 *' lie wondered not that the thing was either rich or rare 
 He only wondered how the devil it jjot there." 
 
 Then, again, toward the close, your antediluvian allusion, 
 smacks siTiartly of the idea that you thought that that flood had 
 been gotten up more for your benefit than to cleanse the world 
 of its wickedness, that you were destined to realize more fame 
 from crossing it, than Sir James Cook did from his voyage round 
 the world, and that by the dint of your omnipotent genius, you 
 had identified yourself with it so thoroughly, that no scholar, of 
 proper refinement, would ever allude to it again in your presence, 
 as Noah's flood, but that hencefi)rth and forever, it would be 
 bound to be known as W. jVl.'s flood, and so designated ui chro- 
 nology and all the Encyclopedias. No doubt you have often 
 
fancied of late, that you could distinctly hear resounding through 
 the lapse of centuries, the roar of its angry surges as they lifted 
 up their loud voices to chant the requiem of the lost millions, 
 over whose graves they rolled. Evidently, it is your deliherate 
 purpose to take possession of and appropriate that Hood and why 
 not. Deucalion claims one; but his was subsequent to yours, 
 and must have been rather a small affiiir, not deep enough water 
 for you, hut his success justifies your ambition and as Noah died 
 in possession of the whole world it is not right to claim for him 
 that flood too. 
 
 The only evidence by which I proved that there must have 
 been gaming before the flood was what is technically termed 
 ''presumptive," and I was amazed at your abrupt and uncondi- 
 tional rejection of it, for surely in this controversy, and I doubt 
 not elsewhere, you have presumed enough yourself to have 
 found out long ago, through your feelings if not otherwise, that 
 in presumption there certainly must be evidence of somethiyig 
 neither refined or polite. 
 
 But why did you institute so pointed a parallel between Lord 
 Erskine and myself? I am bound to suspect that it was because 
 you knew that you could not, and hoped I would not survive 
 the contrast. But thank Heaven, I am still inter vivos. " I still 
 live," little as I pretend to be the peer of the illustrious British 
 Lord; but, if I only had half of your fanatical vanity, 1 never 
 should have known I was not his peer, and should be too happy 
 to care a baubee v)hat you thought about it. But you have dis- 
 covered a sovereign panacea for all the moral ills that gambling 
 flesh is heir to. In the first place, your theory is without the 
 merit of originality, and, moreover, lacks another and still more 
 important merit, to wit: practicality. Ccs discours il est vrai 
 sont fort beaux dans un livre. (All this will do very well for a 
 book. ) 
 
 In the South it has been long since again and again tried, and 
 exploded, and why? There is a logical maxim which runs, 
 "the virtue of a law does not consist so much in the severity as 
 the certainty of punishment," and its truth has been forcibly ex- 
 emplified in all the Southern States, where gambling has been 
 made a felony, but no gambler has ever been made a felon. 
 AVhen you nuike a vice which has hitherto only been a misde- 
 meanor suddeidy assimie the huge proportions of a felony, the 
 people say that you allowed them to become addicted to it as a 
 misdemeanor, and then want to put upon them for the practice 
 of it the penalties of a felony, this, they say, has in it cxpost facto, 
 blood, and morally, it becomes a dead letter. A prosecution un- 
 der it, would furnish much stronger evidence of the malice, than 
 it would of the virtue, oi the informer, and the eflfect of it will 
 dishonor, if it does not defeat the law aiid protect, if it does uot 
 b 
 
68 
 
 provoke and abet culprits. When you imprudently encumber a 
 law with a harsher penalty than the feelings of the public will 
 sanction^, you will thereby at once separate public sympathy from 
 the law, and twine it tenderly around the persecuted criminal, 
 and this must inevitably enure to the permanent prejudice of law 
 and order, by manuring and watering the vigorous mots of crime 
 and sending them deeper into the earth and causing its Upas fo- 
 liage to nourish more luxuriantly above it. 
 
 One of the facts which was in my six- horse team, and which 
 when 1 presented, you attempted to ridicule, but did not dare 
 to deny, was the well known integrity of certain gamblers. 
 Rdiicule is a powerful weapon, only when it is hurled against 
 sophismS; mere casuistry or fanaticisms. Then 
 
 " Ridiculum acri 
 Fortius et melius magnas pkrumque secat res." 
 
 " A jest in scorn points out and hits the thing, 
 More home than the morosest satire's sting, 
 And ridicule shall frequently prevail, 
 And cut the knot where graver reasons fail." 
 
 But when its poisoned arrows hit facts they rebound. When 
 Cervantese opened the batteries of his sarcasm and drollery on 
 Knight Errantry, he fired 74 pound bomb shells at a gossamer 
 Ibrtification. and he blew it into a nonentity. Don Q-uixote was 
 read, and the '^ order" vanished. But when Tom Payne and 
 V'oltairc attempted to fire precisely the same kind of ammunition 
 at the Bible — the very battlements of Heaven — their shells 
 rebonnded before they exploded, and did all the mischief they 
 did at all in their own ranks. Tom Payne and Voltaire are no 
 more, but that Eternal Harp of the Great Jehovah — the Bible, al- 
 beit upon its celestial strings have fallen the blighting breath of 
 twenty-five centuries, yet when over them the soft low sigh of 
 faith tloats, they still give forth an iEolean music, that stirs the 
 highest and holiest hopes that sooth the bruised bosom of 
 fallen humanity. If that which I stated was not the truth, it 
 was beneath ridicule; if it was the truth, it was above it, and I 
 have the opinion of gentlemen, than whom none stand higher in 
 this city, that there are gamblers here whose integrity, that ma- 
 lignant breath, Avhich is bought and sold every day, cheap, un- 
 der the name of scandal, never soiled. Attempt to send such 
 men to the Penitentiary, branded as felons, lor playing a fair 
 game of cards, and the nature that is in the people will bear it 
 not. Whereas if you will make cheating and swindling at cards 
 felonies, and detect, convict, and condemn scoundrels, under 
 this statute, all honorable and high minded men, and honest 
 and upright citizens, will be bound to say to it cordially, amen; 
 and they will do it with a vim, for between a fraud at cards, and 
 a midnight foray upon a sheep-fold, there is no moral distinction. 
 
59 
 
 In your first article, you attempted to prove tliEit a man's liberty 
 to bet would be involved and restrained to some extent, if he had 
 to go past an unlicensed gaming house to get to a lawful gaming 
 house. I declined, when I replied to you, to answer such flimsy 
 sophistry, such sheer halirernc — betisc. To have treated such 
 balderdash with respect, would have required an amount of hy- 
 pocrisy to which 1 could not conscientiously stoop, and I did 
 hope the manner in which I was constrained to treat it, would 
 open your eyes, and you would certainly see its trans[)arent fal- 
 lacy. But no, that is not the way you treat your little mutes, and 
 so you take another tilt at the "fullest and freest fruition of the 
 pet passion of the million," to show you was logically right. I 
 never supposed that, when I only asked that the people might 
 have the freest and fullest fruition of a game wheii they got to it, 
 that you or anybody else, would ever imagine that, to carry out 
 such a law, the game must be taken to the people. And, had 
 you detected any one else in the perpetration of such a tovr 
 d^impuissa?ice, you would have unhesitatingly branded him a 
 ^'Theban Pig." Boeotujn in cj^asso jurares acre natum. 
 
 You certainly have less inclination for discrimination than any 
 law-giver I ever had the misfortune to meet before; and if 1 were 
 to gamble at all, I would hazard largely that you cannot tell whe- 
 ther, in nine cases out of ten, the boy carries the horse to water, 
 or the horse carries the boy to water. A large majority of gam- 
 blers take the initiative in the black art in villages and small 
 towns, where "tigers," when they grow lean and ravenous, prowl 
 in quest of game no bigger than a cocksparrow. The novice 
 begins by buying and betting dime checks; gradually the pas- 
 sion grows apace, and sooner or later he is lost, pecuniarily un- 
 done. This is the history of thousands upon thousands of 
 ruined estates. License gambling, and put the license up at a 
 proper figure, and no man can afford or would pretend to take 
 out license in a village or small town. Youths brought up then 
 at the feet of a village Gamaliel would no longer be beset by the 
 fascinations of fashionable itinerants, seeking to seduce and de- 
 stroy them hard by the altars of their sanctuaries. It would 
 prevent millions upon millions of gray hairs from descending 
 with sorrow to untimely graves, and it would save as many bit- 
 ter, scalding tears from being shed at all, that aged mothers, 
 young wives and orphan children may otherwise have to shed. 
 You ask me would 1 accept a conlrii)Ution to build a church from 
 a gambler. I answer, unhesitatingly, that I would, cheerfully. 
 In the first place, it would take that much from his capital, and 
 thereby contribute to circumscribe his resources for mischief In 
 the second place it would put that much money into the pockets 
 of the poor pious members of that church who would otherwise 
 have to pay it out of their own scanty means. In the third place, 
 
60 
 
 I should only be permitting a man of tlie world to do a good ac- 
 tion, the effect of which upon his meditations, might perchance 
 lead to his regeneration; whereas, its rejection might cost him 
 his soul, with the fear of which 1 would not Hke to have my con- 
 science burthened. In the fourth place, I am always delighted 
 when I see churches going up, under any and all circumstances; 
 and I dare say if a gambler were, out of his abtmdant means, to 
 build a church for a poor community himself, he would be very 
 apt to command more of the confidence and esteem of the con- 
 gregation than a minister of the gospel who would refuse to 
 preach to them in it because they might not be able to pay him 
 the salary he demanded, or appreciate the snow flakes of reh- 
 gion he mingled in his sermons with hailstones of literature, 
 lightnings of vanity and thunders of bombast. Level to the 
 earth to-morrow every church in Richmond gamblers have con- 
 tributed to build or sustain, and many a bright Sabbath morning 
 would come and go before the familiar voice of a glad church 
 bell would be heard again caUing its shepherd's scattered flock 
 to his fold. 
 
 A revenue is necessary to support the government, and taxa- 
 tion is necessary to raise a revenue. There-is a direct and indi- 
 rect way of levying taxes, and that government is always the 
 most perfect, among the citizens of which there prevails the least 
 discontent, and direct taxation always produces more discontent, 
 than any other system. The money which is paid fir a license is 
 an indirect contribution to the public revenue. I say that it is 
 right and proper that this revenue should be levied in part upon 
 the vices of the land, and you say no, let the private virtues of 
 the people bear all of the public burthens of the country. I say, 
 the gambler who has won the last dollar of a sot, before he stag- 
 gers into his grave, ought to be compelled, out of his play-made 
 fortune, to take oft' the widow and orphans his victim may leave 
 with a small estate so settled upon them he could not squander 
 it, a part of "their lade o'care" and pay a part of their taxes. 
 But you say no, let estates of widows and orphans be ground 
 into dust under the iron heel of taxation; let their wails of dis- 
 tress be ever so piercing and let their tears flow ever so thick and 
 fast, still make them respond to the law and pay to the last cop- 
 per due the hungry tax-gatherer, but let the gambler, who has 
 in his coffers the money that should be in theirs, escape with a 
 mere (to hiui) nominal tax. He is rich and they are poor. Yet 
 you say, let hini pay his taxes in pennies and make them pay 
 theirs in doubloons. Such humanity and justice is worthy only 
 of the superstition that, while it recoils with a mock horror from 
 a liberal donation out of funds fairly won and freely offered to 
 you by a gambler to build a church, teases a niggardly merchant 
 out of a jpaltry ■pitiafice, which he grudgingly gives out of a 
 
61 
 
 fund he has told lies enough to accumulate to damn a thousand 
 sonls. The above anibrotvpe fairly presents the natural and le- 
 gal results of your and views mine. 
 
 " Look on this picture and on this." 
 
 But we must part. I have already implored you never to gam- 
 ble. I have now a parting prayer to address to you. I see you 
 are young, ardent, impulsive — and occasionally read your Bible. 
 Now the request I am about to make of you is Jiever do you at- 
 tempt to 
 
 "Gi' the Gospel horn a blast." 
 
 When I implored you never to gamble, it was for your own sake 
 alone I importuned you then, but it is for the cause of religion, 
 pure and undefiled, I am pleading with you now, for you may 
 rest quietly assured that il it could survive the advocacy of your 
 logic and the contamination of your worldly vanity, instead of 
 making the devil hang his harp upon the willow, as it ought, it 
 would only provoke him to redouble his exertions, and we would 
 have ten times more gamblers and infidels than we ever did. 
 Farewell! 
 
 Bcnti voglio don't neglect that flood, your flood — but that 
 was, formerly, called Noah's flood — but don't, I beseech yon, at- 
 tempt to take a man's life with your flood. [That flood has ta- 
 ken lives enough already.] Remember the fote of poor lady 
 Macbeth. After she had caused Duncan to be murdered under 
 her own roof, in his bed, the las^t words that ever escaped her 
 addled lips were: ''To bed! to bed! to bed!" Now, if you 
 were to murder Erskine in that flood of yours, you would be cer- 
 tain to kick the bucket, exclaiming: "To the flood! to the flood! 
 to the flood!" 
 
 ERSKINE. 
 
 CAN GAMBLING BE SUPPRESSED? 
 
 To the Editor of the Whig: 
 
 Having addrossed you, sir, previously on the subject indicated 
 at the head of this article, and wishing to enlarge on some of the 
 points T have heretofore presented, so vitally imf)ortant to the 
 community, I proceed to do so, as briefly as the nature of tho 
 case will admit. From the interest lately shown in this matter, 
 by the authorities in Richmond, it may safely be presumed that 
 the subject is not without a hold upon the mind of the public 
 generally, and that afteiuioa will be vouchsafed to proper con- 
 siderations in regard lo it. 
 
6S 
 
 One proposal is, that this vice, which stamps with dishonor 
 every one known to he addicted to it, shall be actuall}'- made a 
 lawful practice. Houses must be set apart for this purpose. 
 Their proprietors must be taken under the wing of the law. 
 They must be made to stand on a similar honorable footing with 
 the respectable, upright merchants, professional men, farmers, 
 and mechanics of the Slate, whose interests are taken care of by 
 law, as the moral correctness of their business demands. These 
 men, who are now compelled to slink in and out of Iheir dens 
 of impurity, forced to remain on the outer limits of society; these 
 marked men, who would not now feel at home among the cor- 
 rect gentlemen of the land — these men whose talk is of "faros" 
 and "roulettes" and "tigers" — these men drenched in the 
 blood of their fellows — these festering saves on the body politic, 
 whose stench is in the nostrils of all virtuous and refined citi- 
 zens — these men whose very dress and aspect indicate their lost 
 recklessness, and are evident tokens of perdition — such members 
 of the community are to be lifted from their conscious degrada- 
 tion and put on the jDrecise, lawful level, the identical legal foot- 
 ing, and, therefore, to some extent, the same social platform, with 
 the high-minded men whose business and persons have, in all 
 ages of the world been held in high esteem and deemed worthy 
 of the most constant and honored protection of a nation's laws. 
 Is there, sir, a law-abiding, proper business man in Richmond, 
 or elsewhere in Virginia, who does not repel such a proposal with 
 indignation? Would not the sure tendency of this thing be to 
 eradicate the vital distinction between right and wrong, between 
 avocations morally proper, and those which are intrinsically and 
 forever vicious, and between citizens whose lives are correct, 
 and persons whose every step is marked by immorality? What 
 would such a step on the part of the Legislature be but simply 
 an opening- wedge to make way for the vilest of European ideas, 
 sentiments, tastes and practices? 
 
 I said in a late communication to your journal, sir, that a law 
 licensing gaming houses, would be burdened with the disgrace 
 of having been originated in those two infidel nations, France 
 and Germany. The Ioav moral tone of those people is of itself 
 enough to throw an odor of suspicion around any of their laws 
 bearing upon the public purity. Their repute as infidels, in their 
 general preferences and tendencies, is not generally disputed. 
 The national infidelity of Prance, in the days of the revolution 
 of '92, is denied by no one acquainted with the history of the 
 period. The moral venom of the writings of Rosseau, Voltaire 
 and others, had thoroughly poisoned the minds of the masses in 
 France, rendering them ready for the crimes and horrors of that 
 bloodstained era. The destruction of the Church and Gospel of 
 Jesus was the watchword of the people. The convention deco- 
 
rated a strumpet, paraded her in a chariot through the streets of 
 Paris, as the Goddess of Reason, and installed her in the church 
 of Notre Dame, to supercede the oracles of God, and as Voltaire 
 said in regard to Christ, "fo crush the wretch." That conven- 
 tion brought before it the Archbishop of Paris, with other rene- 
 gade bishops and clergy, including a protestant nunister named 
 Julien, compelled them to strip themselves of their priestly gar- 
 ments, and declare that they rejected Christianity as a reliiiion. 
 Infidelity then was in France an unblushing, undoubted thing, 
 and 1 do not believe, from the testimony of the most respectable 
 witnesses, that the mere skepticism of that country has materi- 
 ally diminished siuce the period of the revolution. Dr. Nicholas 
 Murrav, (lately deceased,) an eminent Presbyterian Minister of 
 New .Tersey, who under the '■'■nom de plume'''' of "Kirwan," 
 gained high reputation as the writer of several popular and able 
 works, especially his letters to Chief .Justice Taney ou the Ro- 
 mish religion, says in his book styled ''Men and things I saw 
 in Europe," on page 69, ''France has no religion and no fixed 
 principles." This is the testimony of this sagacious and ob- 
 serving man, from what he beheld with his own eyes, and heard 
 with his own ears. A nation without religion, certainlv cannot 
 believe in the Christian religion, and as a belief in that religion 
 is surely a "fixed principle," a people without "fixed princi- 
 ples" cannot have such belief in the religion of Jesus. It is 
 true, sir, that Romanists occupy high positions in the govern- 
 ment of France, and that her Head is, by profession, a Romanist, 
 as are also many of her l^egislators. But that does not affect 
 the question. Napoleon the First was a Romanist by profession, 
 but he also imprisoned the Pope v/hen it suited his purposes. 
 David Hume, the noted infidel, was a communicant of the 
 Church of Fingland, for office sake. 80 was Collins, and the 
 Earl of Shaftesbtu-y. 80 was Rosseau, first a Papist and then a 
 Protestant. Voltaire also professed a belief in the Popish reli- 
 gion and built a church at his own expense, at the very time he 
 was expressing and publishing his doubts of the existence of a 
 God, and declaring tliat the world was now seeing the twilight 
 of Christianity. 'Phe fact that Romish professors are in the high 
 jilaces in France, and that great nnmbers of her people are also 
 surh ])rofessors, j)rovos notliiiig. The case was the same in the 
 days of" the reigu ot' terror, 'J'he nation has undergone no ma- 
 terial alteration, and as they made iheir Hishopsand Clergy deny 
 the faith in 179.'^, so they niindered their Archbishop in the 
 streets of ]*aris as lately as IbilS. Dr. Murray, on page 80, of 
 the work previously mentioned, says that "the French are mo- 
 rally uneducated," are '^otkristir in the undertone of their opi- 
 nions." thru " Popery is an ovorf^oat to j)nt olf or on as suits the 
 iiour," and " the ^a/w/MJa/j^ of France is religion." One more 
 
64 
 
 reference, sir, on this part of my subject, and I shall pass on. 
 The Right Rev. Alonzo Potter, as distinguished a Bishop as ever 
 sat on the Episcopal bench in the old United States, Avell known 
 to the literarv men of the country, in his introduction to '' Lec- 
 tures on tlie "Evidences of Christianity," says, at page 45, " that 
 a large portion of tlie religious unbelief of any one time or place, 
 is inherited from the past. This is the case with the French in- 
 fidehty of OUR day, which is but a sad legacy from a former gene- 
 ration — the result, for the most part, of early prejudices and asso- 
 ciation?. AVhoever travels i'or a few hours with a Frenchman, 
 who represents the average opinion and feeling of France, will 
 see that the nation at large have hardly heard of Christianity, ex- 
 cept as a superstition which merits consideration only from priests 
 and women." Bishop Potter published this statement in 1855, 
 and I believe he simply confirms the former impressions of 
 the mass of well-informed people of the land. Yet, the peo- 
 ple and authorities of Virginia have been lately exhorted to tread 
 in the path of these people, who, in the language of Dr. Mur- 
 ray, on page SO of his work, "care neither for God or man, and 
 fear nothing in time or in eternity." Principles like those of 
 France are to be introduced among us; yes, into our very laws. 
 Gambling, which these atheistical, demoralized French people 
 love so well as to take it under the care and fostering protection of 
 the government is recommended to be received into the arms of 
 Virginia law-ma!(ers, and the moral mercury of Virginia, to sink 
 at once to the freezing point, as it is in godless and immoral 
 France. What lover of this young country, sir, does not feel 
 his blood to stir, and his very heart-strings tremble at so nefa- 
 rious a proposal? 
 
 I said, in a former communication, that Germany, where garn- 
 bhng is legalized, is also as infidel a country as any nation, 
 within the limits of Christendom, could be. And such is the 
 case. A law opening gaming houses would come foul with the 
 vapors of German morals and German infidelity. What reader 
 of the literature of the day doubts that Germany is at this mo- 
 ment the source and fountain of a large share, not only of the 
 infidelity of Europe, but of the world. The intellectual leaders 
 of the infidelity of the Continent and of England, are Germans. 
 To mention no others, Straus, the Corypheus of modern infi- 
 delity, is a German. The infidels of all the civilized world have 
 their minds impregnated with the ideas and spirit of Straus and 
 his German coopcrators and sympathizers. The infidelity of 
 many German divines, even, is proverbial with all theological 
 scholars in this country, and throughout Christendom. The ef- 
 fect their efforts have had, and the results of the exertions of in- 
 fidels, outside the Church, are evident in the morale of the shoals 
 of infidel Germans, who have for years been floating to the shores 
 
65 
 
 of this continent, and like fetid masses of putrid locusts which 
 are washed up on the Mediterranean coasts, spreading pestilence 
 and death, have tended so powerfully to degenerate and corrupt 
 Northern society, and to put in it, especially in the North-west, 
 so many elements of disease and social rottenness. The social- 
 istic infidelity of the Germans of the North-western States of the 
 Old Union, is about as well known as any fact about them. 
 Their newspapers are nearly all of this cast. They have no 
 ►Sabbath, no Bible, no God. The blasphemous rants of Carl 
 Shurz, in the political canvass of 1S60, yet rouse the horror of 
 the retiecting men of the land, and serve to remind the people 
 of the country, that the nation which produced him, has given 
 birth to thousands like Carl JShurz, and has infidelity enough 
 within its limits to leaven a world, if it were not for a superin- 
 tending Providence, to prevent so dire a result. Bishop Potter, 
 in the work I have mentioned, on page 52, quotes a declaration 
 of one ol the most prominent ministers in Germany, to the pre- 
 cise effect (if the statements I have now made. He represents 
 Dr. Wichern, as declaring at a public missionary meeting, in 
 Germany, that the friends of the Bible had all the science, art, 
 and literature of the Empire against them. The Bishop thinks 
 this an exaggeration, but says, at the same time, that it is accu- 
 rate to an extent that is <' truly appalling." Other evidence of 
 the truth of my averment on this subject, sir, might be adduced, 
 but space will not allow, nor do I prcsmne it to be necessary. 
 The fact is indubitably so. The infidels of Germany are not 
 few in number, but their name is legion, like that of the devils 
 of antiquity , and their influence is scarcely less pernicious. Aye, 
 sir, if we had not been informed that the ancient legion of lost 
 spirits, had gone into the herd of many swine, I think it might 
 have been sagely conjectured that they had entered into the my- 
 riads of German free-thinkers of these days; for scarcely any- 
 thing else could exjilain their multitudinous rush into the dark 
 sea of infidelity. These stern facts will hardly be controverted 
 by any one who values his reputation as a man of correct gene- 
 ral information, and yet it is to Germany, that men in our midst 
 would have us go for morals and for laws. The law of God-de- 
 fying Gernjany, on the subject of gambling are to be brought 
 across the sea, and plarjted in the infant bosom of the new-born 
 republic. A practice, which a majority of the States of the Con- 
 federacy now solemnly declare to be a vice of no common base- 
 ness, is to bo stripped of that black robe, by formal, legal enact- 
 ment, is to be adorned with gannents of purity and whiteness, 
 and Virginia, the mother of statesmen and law-givers, i.s to be 
 the first to pay honor to the long neglected virtue of tliis social 
 monster. Virginia is acttially to take the lead in imitating Ger- 
 many; in the matter of legalizing gambling. By way of (Uoiia- 
 
66 
 
 ishing thfi vice, we are to enact, in our land^ the laws of a coun- 
 try, where gaming in its most revolting forms, confessedly and 
 notoriously, prevails to an extent unprecedented in any other na- 
 tion under heaven. The men, sir, who desire this thing, (and 
 they are not few) should retire to their gambling dens in redden- 
 ing'shame, and confusion of face, for the light of heaven is pol- 
 luted by shining on their impure countenances. Every person 
 who goes much into the world, hears gamblers expressing their 
 wishes that the practice should be legalized, but when such pro- 
 posals are made through the press, the scorn of an indignant 
 people should be hurled at them,- and the authors of such plans, 
 whether they are designing men or ignorant men, should be 
 made to feel the scourge of the public wrath in all its bitterness. 
 Let public opinion, sir, be organized and concentrated on the 
 subject of this vice. Public sentiment in Anglo Saxon Chris- 
 tendom has put an end to female gambling, as a general thing, 
 and it is confessed, that even in Germany, where gambling 
 houses are licensed, the females of the country, as we have 
 been lately told, rarely game; that gambling among women is 
 mostly confined to females from England, the frequenters of 
 West End and Grosvenor Square, who receive no countenance 
 at home, and therefore resort to numerous spas of Germany, 
 even, can prevent female gambling or extinguish it when already 
 existing, (though, perhaps no evidence can be found of its pre- 
 valence there as a common evil) if publict can do this much 
 against/ewa/e gaming, why can it not do great things against 
 gambling among w^e;^? Let this opinion take on its keenest 
 edge in this thing, let fathers and mothers warn their sons as 
 much in regard to this vice, as they do in reference to the intoxi- 
 cating cup. Let the various classes of professional men use 
 their respective engines of power, to their utmost capacity, against 
 it. Let anathemas, which have hitherto slept, awake from their 
 slumbers and break over this crime. Let them issue from the 
 bar and from the bench, from the chair of the professor, from the 
 pulpit of the preacher, from the sanctum of the editor, as a great 
 statesman once reconnnended, let them come from the marque 
 of the commanding general on the field of war; let the friends of 
 hw and the common virtue unite their voices and compel them- 
 selves to be heard everywhere, on a matter so vitally interesting 
 to all, so nearly concerning the public morality and happiness of 
 all. Let this be done and more stringent laws be arrayed against 
 this immorality; cause them to be carried out in the country as 
 well as in the city, in villages as well as in the larger communi- 
 ties, and this cankerous excrescence on the social body must ne- 
 cessarily diminish, and gamesters and their abettors shall be 
 hunted from among men, as we do a murderer, an adulterer, or 
 a thief* Let every gambler have on his brow the broad black 
 
67 
 
 seal of reprobation; teach the youth of the land to regard such 
 men as thieves and robbers, and common nuisances, and tlien a 
 new generation of men shall, in time, come upon the social stage, 
 and this crime sliall be reduced to as low an ebb as human laws 
 and general opinion can bring any vice. In order to prevent 
 Richmond's becoming as New Orleans has lately been, the wri- 
 thing victim of 110 gambling holes, let the strongest laws be 
 passed by a legislature, jealous for the honor and welfare of the 
 people, make the punishment both severe and certain ; let games- 
 ters be given to understand that they at least, shall not dictate to 
 law-givers as to whether their practice shall be treated as a mis- 
 demeanor, rather than as a felony; let all men who want the Go- 
 vernment to support itself, or take care of the poor, by taxes on 
 gambhng, be reminded of what Paul says of those who would 
 do evil that good may come, viz. that their " damnation is just." 
 Teach men that the vice of gaming, does not consist in cheating 
 at cards, in what some might term the abuse of the practice, but 
 that the thing itself is an abuse, that to speak of the ' abuse of 
 gambling is like descanting on the abuse of drunkenness or of 
 roguery, that the act itself is a vice, cheat and a fraud, that the 
 '^ integrity of gamblers" is a contradiction in terms, as much so 
 as to talk of a sober drunkard or an honest thief; rouse private 
 citizens, to show this evil as little countenance as they do to the 
 reeling sot, or the branded rogue; let them teach all their sons 
 and daughters to avoid gamblers, as they would the noxious mi- 
 asma of a' pestilence; bring to bear on this crime the whole moral 
 enginery of public law and public opinion, and people who come 
 after us shall rejoice in the removal of a fearful burden, and in- 
 hale a purer moral atmosphere than that which surrounds the 
 men of our day, and our land. 
 
 AV. JM. 
 Buchanan, Botetourt Co., Va. 
 
 APOLOGETIC. 
 
 Fairs sa7is dire has ever been the modest aim of ^'Erskine." 
 Taste, properly refined, must forever eschew all manner of esta- 
 la ffc— espaciaWy that of pedantry; but because ''Erskine" failed 
 to adduce au piedde la lettre, the testimony Perseus left on re- 
 cord against Amez-Ace, ''W. M." in his rampant ambition to 
 expose and deride the humble poverty of '' Erskine's" erudition, 
 and to 'Miang out the banners" of his own aliluent 5a?;oi> ''on 
 the outward walls" /jro tempore, forgets the terrific boasts of im- 
 placable hostility to gannng with which he has of late been cau- 
 sing the gambling world to stand aghast, and to gratify at one 
 and the same time, his vanity and his malice; he calls to the wit- 
 
6» 
 
 ness stand, not only the immortal poet aforesaid, when his 
 testimony is directly against him, hut also that evangelical law- 
 giver to whose inspired pen we are indebted for the Pentateuch, 
 when the testimony he gives, under '' W. M.'s" own construc- 
 tion of it, locates the vice of gaming within a squirrel's jump of 
 the flood. '^ W. M." is certainly an unfortunate wight. In 
 some awkward form or other he seems to be fatally doomed to 
 figure continually in comedie larmoyante {distressing farces.) 
 At first this was a source of no litde amusement to "Erskine," 
 but it is so no longer. Toward " W. M." "^Erskine" cherishes 
 no vindictive feeling. Juvenal educated him above it when he 
 said: Miniiti semper et i/ijinni est a?iimi exigique voluptas 
 ultio. f Revenge is always the pleasure of a narrow, diseased 
 and little mind.) So did our own poet who said: 
 
 " Revenge we find 
 The weakest frailty of a feeble mind.'" 
 
 And as the rapidly accumulating misfortunes of f' W. M." have 
 reached a climax in this controversy where a magnanimous com- 
 misseration must swallow up everything resembling a vindictive 
 resentment, '^Erskine" has generously resolved that in order to 
 afford to the devoted head of " W. M." a temporary respite from 
 the storm of quips, gibes and hoots, his manifold palpable blun- 
 ders have called down in fierce torrents upon it, he will ad hoc 
 make an effort to deserve to be laughed at himself, and to that 
 end, will take a literary escapade — spree, go on a regular classi- 
 cal ^'bender." Be not alarmed then lector benevole, if 
 
 " Bernam wood 
 Do come to Dunsinane." 
 
 Or, if tothe^«a/e,of poetical and classical quotations, metaphors 
 and allusions "the cry is still they come," and, if en attendant 
 the idea should occur to you that "Erskine" is affected with a 
 poco di matto (slight tinge of madness,) you will perceive if you 
 look further, avise la fin, that there is method in it. " W. M.," 
 it is apparent, solemnly believes that in poetical and classical 
 quotations there is a mysterious power — a power before which 
 facts and their logical sequences vanish, as Macbeth 's witches 
 did into "thin air," and, gentle reader, as it is not you, but " W. 
 M." that "Erskine" is alter, and there is but one way to fight 
 the devil successiuUy, to wit, with fire, you must draw your 
 cloak around you, for verily 
 
 " Poelica surgit 
 
 Tempestas.^' (A storm of potry is gathering.) 
 
 CAN GAMBLING BE SUPPRESSED? 
 
 To '^ W. M.", — At the head of an article I addressed, on the 
 7th of December last; (1861;) to the Editor of the Whig; 1 pro- 
 
G9 
 
 pounded the above inten'ogatory. In that article I assumed de- 
 lerenlially, that a vnon avis the total suppression of gambling 
 Avas an utter impossibihty, and gave some of the facts and ra- 
 tionale — expose dc motifs (a statement of reasons) , which had con- 
 spired to force that conclusion upon my mind. Whereupon you 
 affected to have been smitten as with an electrical shock from a 
 galvanic battery, of horror, and snatchijig up your "gray goose 
 quill," rushed into tjie curriculum to pit y(uirself against all 
 comers, who, in yourjingnst presence, should dare to draw their 
 blades in defence of my views. The partial suppression of gam- 
 bling, I admitted was practicable, and suggested the outlines of 
 a law, which would, if promptly enacted and vigorously en- 
 forced, be bound to produce favorable results in that direction. 
 You joined issue with mc upon the opinion I gave, the facts I 
 stated, and the feasibility of the remedy I advocated. A con- 
 troversy ensued, in which you have advertised too woful an 
 amount of universal ignorance to give to your own opi- 
 nions any other character than that of will-o'-the-wisps, my facts 
 you failed to confront with facts, and the only remedy you sug- 
 gested in lieu of the one I advocated, was an old effete and 
 exploded theory which has been weighed in the balance and 
 found wanting. Your last article appeared in the Whig of the 
 14th inst., (February, 1862,) and is substantially C'est le re- 
 frain dc la ballade, (the old story over again,) crambe bis coda, 
 3L\-i\eve rechauff'age ; and as in it there is nothing new that is 
 true, or true that is new, I shall take leave of you in a resume — 
 recapitulation of some of the facts which constitute a part of the 
 history of our discussion, each of which, or at least each of the 
 more instaniiae osicnsivac of which I shall endeavor to demon- 
 strate is a polemical blunder, not for the idle or wanton purpose 
 o{ persiflage, but with the benevolent hope and earnest desir^ 
 that it may exercise a mollifying influence upon that ainabilis 
 iiisania — amiable infirmity of which your modesty is occasion- 
 ally the victim, to wit, the conceit, that in your pen there is a su- 
 pernatural magic, and in your logic an irresistible momentum. 
 It is true it is a mere mentis gratissimiis error, (gratifying men- 
 tal delusion,) and it may wear the appearance of cmelty to seek 
 to rob you ol it, but it is a duty I owe to the public. You have 
 been guilty of sundry flagrant violations of the laws of good 
 taste, and as you plume yourself upon being the advocate of the 
 rigid enforcement of the iron letter of the law, you must remem- 
 ber that the holy evangelists from whom you quote with such a 
 voMVAfkMe pleonas?n , warns you that he who lives by the sword 
 must die by the sword. Rouchfoucald tells us "few are so wise 
 as to prefer the censure which would be useful to them to the 
 flattery which betrays them," and if I should not receive for the 
 enumeration of your tiiaiseries, with which I shall herein furuish 
 
70 
 
 yon, the gratitude to which I shall be entitled, I shall neither bo 
 disappointed or surprised. 
 
 *' Now to the instruction of an liumble friend, 
 Who would himself be better taught, attend, 
 Though blind jour guide, some precepts better known, 
 He may disclose that you may make your own." 
 
 Imprimis then you committed a prodigious blunder in thrust- 
 ing yourself forward to provoke this contrggt^ersy. The question 
 under discussion is intrinsically of a legalf|^pe. Discussion can 
 have but two legitimate objects, to wit, the elimination of truth 
 and the edification of mind. To you, legal science is a sealed 
 book. 
 
 "There needs no ghost, my lord, to come from the grave 
 To tell us this." 
 
 In the misuse you have already made of legal terms you 
 have converted an incorporeal hereditament into lands and tene- 
 ments, and pray, sir, how can a planet shrouded in a Cimmerian 
 opacity shed light. Ex nihilo nihil Jit (nothing can come from 
 nothing.) The science of the law is as deep as the sea, limit- 
 less as the universe, and "eternal as the stars." It requires the 
 "lucubrations of twenty years" to reach the point of a formal 
 acquaintance with it; familiarity costs the immolation of a life- 
 time, yet you have had the cool audacity to present yourself be- 
 fore the world on the soil that produced the God-like genius and 
 holds the sacred ashes of the illustrious Chief Justice Marshall, 
 to edify mankind upon the merits of a question essentially legal 
 before you are able to discriminate the terms which describe a per- 
 sonal chattel, from those technically representing a landed estate, 
 which to some extent may account for the quizical mauvais pas 
 into which you pitched headlong when you attempted to work 
 up a landed estate into that immarcessihle illustration of yours. 
 You have evidently devoted your past life to some other calling 
 than that of the law upon which benignly fortunate circum- 
 stance those lucky litigants who might have been yotir luckless 
 clients, are justly entitled to a hearty Qongratulation, and, I re- 
 spectfully suggest that your own proper calling is as much as you 
 are equal to. Propertius hit the head of the nail when" he said, 
 Omnia no7i pariter reruni sunt omnibus apta, (all things are not 
 alike for all men lit,) which has been happily versified thus : . 
 
 " One science only can one genius fit, 
 So vast is art so narrow human wit." 
 
 Toward the conclusion of your last article you propose to 
 rouse the pulpit against this license law, and nov/ sir, allow me 
 to suggest to you that therein you committed another blunder. 
 It is the business of the pulpit to expound the written laws of 
 
n 
 
 God. With the hustings and the merits of die questions can- 
 vassed there, it can properly have nothing to do. It was the 
 pragmatism of the pharisaical cant — whiners of the New Eng- 
 land pulpit that attempted to dove-tail the political question of 
 slavery into theology, that has placed a million of men face to 
 face in arms against each other on tented fields and embattled 
 plains. Against gambling it is legitimate and proper for minis- 
 ters of the gospelto preach. But neither with this law or that 
 upon one subject or another, is it proper or prudent for ministers 
 to meddle in any shape or form, and the congregation and com- 
 munity that will tolerate it, will soon find the parsons whom they 
 thus indulge, making stump speeches and scribbling in the news- 
 papers, and if there is one curse that is more to be dreaded and 
 deplored than another by the church it is one of these demago- 
 gical parsons whose passion for s])lurging cannot be circumscribed 
 by the opportunities for display afforded by the pulpit, but who, 
 to employ scriptural language, must go a whoring after the ap- 
 plause of the busting, and the celebrity of lUteraieur in the press. 
 
 Your third mistake occurred in that ''wild goose chase" you 
 went on, after the imaginary virtues of thht low down herd of 
 canaille — meiidici niimi balatroncs (beggars, buffoons and scoun- 
 drels) known to history as tlie Antediluvians. I had simply iu- 
 snuiated that they were no better than they ought to have been 
 c'cst a dire that they were for all the world, just like other people, 
 and it was for you to have exclaimed justement vous avcz rencon- 
 tre, (right, you have hit (he nail on the head,) and to have worked 
 up the vraieemblance of my specific charges, beautifully into the 
 provocation of the flood. But you did not seem to thmk so, 
 and thereupon sprung dehors the record a collateral and immaterial 
 issue, to support which, you made a long and weary pilgrimage 
 rtood wards, only avoir V alter pour le vcnir (to have your going 
 for your coming), and merit the rebuke contained in Martial's 
 apothegm, to wit, stultus labor est inejjtiarwm (silly is the labor 
 bestowed on trifles.) 
 
 The world was created 4004 years before the birth of Christ 
 and was 2348 years old when the fiood occurred. Now, sir, 
 were you on the witness stand and sworn would you swear that 
 you do believe that for 234S years there was no^amblingon earth. 
 Nobody believes you would. 
 
 I suppose you thought (fuo: c lovgiaquo mas;is placcnt'Cihc 
 further fetched the more things please,) and whether the fll^a- 
 telles you brought home witli you would or would not answer 
 any other purpose, they wouiaj.l)e bound to prove. that you had 
 made at least one trij) to T'orinth, and was a travelled gentleman 
 and hoNio midtaruni liicraruin, (a man of great learning.) Be 
 that as it may the ''sports" if they are gci/t libcra/c musi and 
 sans double do feel eternally grateful to you for the zeal and per- 
 
72 
 
 tinacity with which you have struggled to estabHsha reasonable 
 doubt that their avocation constituted any portion of that long 
 catalogue of flagitious vices and crimes that kindled the wrath of 
 Jehovali, opei.ed the windows of Heaven, and broke up the foun- 
 tains of the mighty deep. You vehemently denied that Barsa- 
 bas and Matthias gambled for the Apostleship, and to illustrate 
 the innocence of that simple little game of hazard, to the arbitra- 
 trament of which they, through their friends appealed, you got 
 up that unique and sui genei'is landed estate illustration of yours, 
 about which, however, I never have been able to coax or tanta- 
 lize you to say one word since. Each of these blunders might 
 be properly designated double blunders, but to economize time,, 
 ink and paper, I will simply label them in the order they have 
 been stated, blunders No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4. 1 never 
 pretended that any names to which 1 had referred had given dig- 
 nity or innocence to gaming. You intimated that I did, which 
 is blunder No. 5. You asseried, in round, blunt terms, that ^' pub- 
 lic opinion has put an end to female gaynbling for inoney,''^ (I 
 quote ipsissima ve?-ba) which is blunder No. 6. Subsequently, 
 you had the hardihood to claim that your allusion was only to 
 the suppression of female gambling as ''a general thing" and as 
 '"'•'a vice" and confined strictly to the territorial jurisdiction over 
 which the Addison school of civilization prevailed, but that was 
 a mere Qnutato elenchi and is a construction of which your 
 plain and direct language is utterly insusceptible, and then, 
 when I proved that the females who still gamble in Europe, 
 speak Addison's language and belong to his school of civiliza- 
 tion, you condescended to make allusions to them the mauvaiston 
 of which is well calculated to excite speculations upon the charac- 
 ter of your past female associations, or the more probable insuscep- 
 tibility of your nature to the gentle and beneficent influences of 
 the sex, from which your vanity might find it no very easy task 
 to derive anything that could be ex facile mistaken for solid so- 
 latium, and this, sir, must be scored against you as blunder No. 
 7. You then facetiously ask, where was murder, robbery, &.C., 
 «fcc., ever put down, thereby intimating that because those crimes 
 have not ceased, that they are therefore, as gambling is, indi- 
 rectly tolerated, which is blunder No. 8. You defined gambling 
 to be the acquisition of something for nothing, whereas it con- 
 sists in risking one thing for another thing upon a contingency , 
 which is your 9th blunder. You denied that gambling was a 
 pet passion of the million, but neglected to mention the name of 
 any otiicr pastime which you could venture to assert was the 
 one-tenth part as popular, which is blunder No. 10. Yon then 
 innocently recited a brief relation historiquc of your experience 
 in the communities you had visited in the Old Dominion, which 
 brought up to the surface of my memory — '' caused to pass be- 
 
73 
 
 fore my mental eye," an odd old Fish I once knew '^' Alas, poor 
 Yorick" nobody knows him now — oven the places that knew 
 him once, will know him never more. He has gone to that 
 bourne from whence not even a plausible rumor has ever yet re- 
 turned. His name was Michael Spivy, and he was generally 
 called ''Uncle JMike," and Uncle Mike had a way of his own of 
 always having his own way, more sico. I cannot truthfully say 
 that the ''flashes of his merriment (a la Yorick) were wont to 
 set the table in a roar," but J do remember well that he was wont 
 to roar himself when the table Avas not set at the usual time. He 
 was born in a sequestered, rural ravine known as Possum Holler, 
 in it he was reared up, and until he had seen forty winters at 
 home he never had seen anything, elsewhere. Yet he was some- 
 what of a crassa mincrva, and rose in process of time to be quite 
 a hahadoor in Possum Holler. His ipse dixit there passed for a 
 quasi sort of law, and when the wants of the Holler finally ex- 
 hausted the remedial expedients of Uncle Mike's stuck of politi- 
 cal economy — his people gathered around him and representing 
 to him the vast advantages that might inure to Possum Holler, 
 and to his own fan:ie, if he would only go out into the world 
 and occasionally look around and about him, with a thouglitlul, 
 enquiring and observing eye, they urged upon him to go, and 
 he went, not with his fingers in his mouth, bless you, but with 
 his eyes and nostrils wide open. Inter alia, he was atfected 
 with a mono nmniaon the subject of universal reformation. He 
 used to say that once on a tiiue he had a revelation from on high, 
 to the effect that he was born to be a Reformer, not on as small 
 a scale as Luther was, but an Universal Reformer, and with the 
 afflatus of this vision in his soul whenever he met with a custom 
 or a habit that did not come square up to the standard of Possum 
 Holler, he swore it was not right, and whenever he heard of any- 
 thing of which he had never heard in Possum Holler, he swore 
 it was not so — could not and ought not to be so. Hoc a te non 
 viultutn ahludit imago, (this picture bears no slight resemblance 
 to you) lor it is plain to be seen that you want to rule the world 
 and regulate its social institutions by the Botetourt moral lex 
 loci, and seem to be astounded that anything that does not 
 happen daily there possibly can happen at all elsewhere. So 
 henceforth you must excuse me if 1 call you Uncle Mike, and 
 allude to good old Botetourt (on your account only) as Possum 
 Holler. iNow, sir, when 1 spoke of the " million" I was talking not 
 about Possum Holler, but the world at large. My allusion was to 
 the myriads of human insects, the buzz of whom it is not rational 
 to presume that the denizens of the Hollerever heard, and your at- 
 tempt to make the mountain of the world go to the Mahomet of 
 Possom Holler, is blunder No. 11. You charge me with going 
 off half-cocked, and recommit to my more special examination 
 
74 
 
 one of my own arguments, under your edaircissement. This 
 was a specimen oi friendly familiar itij, the propinquity of which 
 to your subsequent well intended alkision to my paternal respon- 
 sibiUties is patent upon profert — recta fronte, all of which have 
 in them the genuine tinkle of S^ossum Holler, and outside of 
 that celestial Empire must run imminent risk of being christened, 
 lor the want of a more euphonius "term," impertinence, and 
 amounts to a brace of blunders, but which I will consolidate and 
 simply claim is blunder No. 12. I assumed that tlie rigid en- 
 forcement of a law licensingand regulating gambling would abo- 
 lish it entirely in villages, and coniine it to a few houses in the 
 larger cities. To this you replied that the most depraved could 
 club together and pay the tax, forgetting ex facie that the law 
 suggested required a heavy bond to be given to protect the public 
 against both frauds and insolvency, and which only men of cha- 
 racter coidd give, and this is blunder No. 13. 
 
 You stated that a mere garland of leaves was the only prize 
 for which they contended in the Olympian, Isthmean and Py- 
 thian games. Tacitus and Heroditus and the more modern his- 
 torians, Ottley, Rutt, Pocock and Talfourd, all say that the prize 
 awarded the victor was yVe^i^e/i^/y money; which is blunder No. 
 14. You said I had plead the antiquity of gambling in vindica- 
 tion of it, whereas I never filed any plea whatever in vindication 
 of gambling; which is blunder No. 15. Moreover, I never heard 
 its vindication attempted by any one, a coeur ouvert. You say 
 I represented you as bringing forward your idea about a '■^ re- 
 striction upon men's liberty" as an argument against my plan, 
 whereas such a representation I never made; which is blunder 
 No. 16. Your mind seems to be perpetually enveloped in ne- 
 bulae. You remind one of a ship at sea in the fog without a 
 needle or an alarm bell, and you seem to say everything you do 
 say a tort et a travers (at random.) Axio?nata, you have none, 
 save one, and that is, to never lose a good opportunity to blun- 
 der. About matters of which you know the least you say the 
 most, especially when any ''= damnation" that is ^^just," as you 
 take it, is to be done, wherein you remind one of a certain batch 
 of critics, of whom (Jicero spoke when he said' dan inajit quod 
 non inielligunt {they condemn what they do not understand.) 
 Yet you become indignant if any one presumes to suggest that 
 you may per possibility be mistaken. Certainly you never could 
 have heard of the old French aphorism, grande deraisqn de pre- 
 tendre toujours avoir raison. (It shows a remarkable want of 
 reason to be fancying one's self only always in the right.) 
 
 You set out in this controversy to make it a logical tourna- 
 ment. Logic was the burden of the song you came charging 
 into the champ clos singing, and I expected to see the stars of 
 Dr. Thornwell, Daniel Webster and Lord Bacon all batting their 
 
twinkles in a sombre eclipse under the gorgeous blaze of ratio- 
 cination with which the horizon of Possum Holler was to be 
 lit up; but lo! it aiiit so, and the candidate for logical laurels 
 from Possum Holler has bolted from the broad, smooth and open 
 highway of induction to bushwhack it amons^ the brambles and. 
 briers of opprobrious epithets. No doubt Dr. Thornwell feels 
 easier, and the good angels that watch over the stars of Webster 
 and Bacon's fame have, I dare say, waved their plumes in con- 
 gratulation to each other, that in their proper orbits, to employ 
 the 7iovissiwa verba of the God-like Daniel, they ^' still live." 
 When, however, you put aside the Damascus blade of logic and 
 commenced throwing the brickbats of Newgate (for I know not 
 by what other name to call epithets) you told the world that 
 short sword exercise was not much in vogue in Possum Holler; 
 that you did not know much aboutcouching lances astride of fiery 
 steeds, but that if they would permit you to dismount from your 
 high mettled Pegassus and chunk the gamblers with billingsgate, 
 that you could and would show the world, or, at least, that por- 
 tion of it who are resting under the coimnunis error that mots 
 rf' argot — slang is peculiar to fish markets, how little they know 
 of the extent to which the liberty of speech is indulged and en- 
 joyed in Possum Holler; and therein j'ou committed blunder 
 No. 17. And when you suppose that you can enjoin gambling 
 with mephytic gaze, or demolish or reform gamblers with tirades 
 of obloquy, reproach and denunciation, you only betray how 
 superficially you have read that exhaustless volume of riddles, 
 entitled "human nature," and to correct which I refer you to 
 the history of one Bill Sykes, as written by Dickens in his 
 charming little romance, of which Oliver Twist is the hero. 
 Bill was an outlaw and had provoked the public to a point whereat 
 they were not to be restrained or controlled, so they rose against 
 him en masse, and run him up a tree, and so graphic and thrill- 
 ing is the picture that Dickens gives us of the tortures and ago- 
 nies under which Bill writhes, while the infuriated mob, greedy 
 and thirsting for his blood, are howling like so many ferocious 
 wolves about to seize their prey, that as a worker in the moral 
 vinyard, he breaks down, for the shudder of sympathy which 
 he causes to involuntarily shock our sensibilities fi>r the awful 
 sufferings and impending doom of this abandoned wretch, an- 
 nounces to us that we have forgotten the crime to co.nmiserate 
 the criminal, and, in attempting to make us approve his fate, he 
 forces us to wish he could escape it; and you committed precisely 
 the same blunder— (and it is No. IS), when you opened the bat- 
 teries of your abuse, and poured into the ranks of the gamblers 
 such a merciless broad-side of molten villification. There are to 
 be found in the city of Richmond, gamblers capable of /c;)^//•iO^ 
 kme Ic plus pur , (the purest and most disinterested patriotism.) 
 
70 
 
 A gambler was recently indicted in Richmond, and put upon his 
 trial, for keeping a gambling house. He summoned to the wit- 
 ness stand Coniederate Brigadier Generals and Confederate Se- 
 nators, and by them he proved the rendition of servir.es to the 
 Confederate States, Avhich in value to the country were above all 
 pri^e. Yet he asked no renumeration, and received none, not- 
 withstsnding he had incurred a heavy expenditure of his private 
 fundS; and imperilled his liberty and his life. It was proven that 
 it was upon the information he procured, that the movements of 
 our troops were controlled on the 18th and 21st of July last (at 
 Bull Run and Manassas.) It was proven, moreover, that he had 
 expended dollars by the thousand to arm and equip soldiers by 
 the regiment. He was acquitted, and I heard a member of the 
 church say, who was on the jury, that under the high character 
 he established before that jury for probity, patriotism and useful- 
 ness, they could not have brought witnesses enough into that 
 Court House to have convicted him. True, it may be, that he 
 did once preside over one of those fashionable Main street ''hells," 
 but if he did, it seems that when he was there it was not with the 
 clatter of clicking checks his thoughts were occupied, but while 
 others, who were there to win his money, if they could, were 
 standing with baled breath, over the turn of a card, he was pon- 
 dering upon the best way to invest whatever it might win for 
 him, to contribute the most comfort to our camps, and advance 
 the cause of ourconmion country. He gambled nonsibi sed pa- 
 triae, (not for himself but for his country.) And, sir, when the 
 hoof of the invader first threatened the green fields of your be- 
 loved Virginia, who was it that was the very first to rush be- 
 tween your defenceless bosom and Yankee bullets and bayonets. 
 Captains Arthur Conner, James Nilligan, John Barclay, Mange 
 and Hawes. Th^se gentlemen spent over twenty thousand dol- 
 lars to (expedite their precipitation into the field, and there they 
 have been ever since, and 1 heard an officer of high rank and 
 astute perception, say but the other day that these captains whom 
 I have named above, were worth, to the Confederate army, ten 
 thousand times over their weight in gold. One of them has 
 sim.e been made a major, and others of them have been fre- 
 quently paid the highest comphments their rank could receive, 
 in the posts of duty to which they have been assigned when oc- 
 casions seem to be at hand that were to try men's souls. Now, 
 sir, what do you suppose is their calling — every one of them be- 
 ,long to that proscribed class over which you of late have been 
 wailing so bitterly, and gnashing your teeth so savagely, and, 
 sir, when rabiJo ore you apply to such men such epithets as 
 "thief," ''robber, and "murderer" your boutade becomes /e- 
 lum imbclle sine ictu, (a feeble dart thrown without effect,) and 
 you put the language of Horace in the mouth of everybody, to 
 
h 
 
 1 
 
 wit: Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi, (whatever you 
 show me in such a way as to outrage common sense, I view M'ith 
 ieeUngs of incredulity and disgust.) The pubhc are bound to 
 know that the oppn^brious terms in which you deal, does not con- 
 tain the truth, and the popular sympathy that such virulent vi- 
 tuperation will arouse, will lose sight of the crime to shelter the 
 culprit. In Possum Holler, 1 dare say it might work well, but 
 among the outside barbarians, no higher appreciation of slander 
 obtain^ will enable us on this side of that " wall" to despise that 
 unmanly vice, and if you persist in attempting to sow broad-cast 
 over the land diese Possum Holler morals of yours, you are des- 
 tined not only to hear breaking upon your startled ear 
 
 "The laughter of triumph and the jeers of the world," 
 
 but you will finally precipitate all Possum Hollerdom into en 
 onauvaise — eternal disrepute. You ask could anything be tuore 
 obvious, than the proposition, that the severer the punishment, 
 the greater the probability that men will be deterred from the com- 
 mission of the unlawful act?" Why, sir, if you will make the 
 penalty for gambling death, your special joro^c^es, (the lowest 
 class of gamblers,) would deal fliro with impunity en plein jour 
 in the Market House, or at the Court House door, when your 
 grand jury are in session. 
 
 That is a wise legal maxim of which I reminded you in my 
 last letter, to wit — "The wisdom of a law consists not in the se- 
 verity but the certainty of punishment." It originated in that 
 enlarged and comprehensive spirit of philanthropy to which we 
 are indebted (ov su niniuni jus summainjvria and also for jusswni- 
 iniun saepe sunirna est malitia, legal maxims which rule the adju- 
 dications of criminal tribunals throughout Christendom, and fur- 
 nish conclusive proof, that the proclivities ot the law under the gui- 
 dance of human judges, are setting, with no ordinary impetus, 
 in the direction of clemency, but you, I perceive, are predisposed 
 to rebuke and repudiate this sign of the times, but, sir, it is no 
 sickly sentimentalism against which you are arraigning yourself, 
 but a wholesome, salutary and benign innovation upon the cruel 
 barbarisms of the feudal ages, and has conmianded the respect 
 and controlled the conduct of our wisest judges and most austere 
 executives. 
 
 Over forty years ago, gambling was made a felony in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia, and during the presidency of General Jackson, 
 one Jacob Dixon was convicted and sentenced to the Peniten- 
 tiary for gambling, whereupon old Hickory decided that the pe- 
 nalty was disproportionate to the oflence, and immediately sent 
 him a pardon. For about a quarter of a century thereafter, that 
 law was violated every day in Washington City, with impunity, 
 until William Marcus was convicted under it during the presi- 
 
dency of James Buchanan, when old Buck, taking the same 
 view cf it old Hickory did, in Dixon's case, disposed of the case 
 of Marcus in the same manner. Humanity is one of the ruling 
 instincts of our race, and that pious minstrel woke celestial mu- 
 sic when he swept the cords of the human heart with the follow- 
 ing simple words: 
 
 " Teach me to feel anolher's woe, 
 
 And hide the fault I see, 
 That mercy I to others shotc, 
 
 That mercy show to me," 
 
 Man's nature is eminently emotional. 
 
 "Compassion proper to mankind appears, 
 Which nature witnessed when she gave us tears." 
 
 And in that solemn, sublime and beautiful prayer which fell 
 from the lips of our Saviour, we are instructed to say to our 
 Heavenly Father, ^^ forgive us our trespasses as loe forgive those 
 who tresjjass against us,'' and the old Latin poet tells us: 
 
 LicAiit, semperque licebit 
 Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis. 
 
 (It ever has been lawful and ever will be to spare the person 
 but to censure the vice.) You referred me to the sermons and 
 conversations of our Saviour, and I find that he loved the crimi- 
 nal when he abhorred the crime. Yet you seem to be as rabid 
 as a copper-head in dog days^ against all persons occupying an 
 equivocal position in society. And why! Hath not gamblers 
 eyes, hath not gamblers " hands, organs, dimensions, sense, af- 
 fections, passifMis? fed with the same food, hurt by the same 
 weapon, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the 
 same winter and sun)mer,as "deacons" are. If you prick them 
 do they not bleed, if you tickle them do they not laugh, If you - 
 poison them do they not die." To you it evidently never oc- 
 curs that in them there can linger a redeeming quality. Upon 
 5'-our frozen and obdurate heart the example and the injunctions 
 of the world's Saviour are utterly and forever lost. When a 
 poor, fallen and friendless woman was taken flagranti delicto, 
 and dragged before him ior judgment, he pronounced a sentence 
 which sent her manly prosecutors sneaking, like whipt spaniels, 
 out of his presence. To her he mildly said, "Go and sin no 
 more." And, if you Avill turn back into the Old Testament and 
 read the history of Josluia's expedition against .Tericho,you will 
 find that when the gates and walls of that city toppled into ruins 
 under the inspired blasts of his ram's horns,amidst all the v/reck 
 and desolation of that hour, the domicil of Rahab the harlot, 
 stood a monument of divine mercy; and pray, sir, why? Sim- 
 ply because she had sheltered two of Joshua's spies and assisted 
 them to elude pursuit. Yet when gamblers render services to 
 
1$ 
 
 the Confederate States of ten thousand fold greater value than 
 were the services of Rahab to Joshua, but tor which an all-wise, 
 supremely good and sternly just God, threw over her mansion 
 and lier person the mantle of his precious mercy, you denounce 
 them through tfie public press as " thieves" and " robbers" and 
 "murderers." From the frequency and facility with which you 
 dealt in Scriptural quotations, I did, atone time, flatter you wilii 
 the suspicion that you was most prohal)!y a deaon; but I do ar- 
 dently hope and trust, lor the sake of the Christian religion and 
 the general welfare of society, that in this vague surmise 1 was 
 entirely mistaken. For, sir, let it once get bruited abroad that W. 
 M. is a deacon, and that deacon VV. M. hatidles so flippantly and 
 expertly, such savage expletives as "thief" "robber" and" mur- 
 derer," and what else can we reasonable expect, but that all the 
 beardless boys in the country, will straightway be found dipping 
 into expletives too, and tliat when arraigned for it, they will point 
 to your example as high anth(U"ity f)r its correctness and pro- 
 priety. What could you hav^e been thinking about — oh deacon, 
 deacon, (if you area deacon) to set before the iiiipre>;sible youth 
 of our land such a "nefarious" example, lietween harsh epithets 
 and mild oaths there is scarcely a colorable distinction. You' 
 pass from one to the other imperceptibly. T«) say the least of it 
 from epithets to oaths is but one step, from oaths to whisky but 
 one, and but one from whisky to cards, and \vhen a boy has 
 reached cards, deacon don't you know he is hellwards bound, 
 and is as surely doomed to drop into the eternal pit when he dies, 
 as ripe fruit is to fall when it is shaken by an autumnal blast. 
 Oh! \V. M., VV. M.! deacon W. M.! ! what an awful curse is this 
 with which yon, by the dint of an evil example, are threaten- 
 ing the hopes of our youth and the happniess of our homes. 
 Don't you remember Horace tells us 7ii/. afjcif. exemplu7n litem, 
 quod lite rcsolvit, (that example does nothing which in removing 
 one differently introduces another). Yet in the lace of this trite 
 axiom, you, in an inellectual attempt to preveiU what you miscon- 
 ceive to be a prospective evil, sow broad-cast over the land the 
 dragon's teeth of profanity, from which are destined to spring 
 up a crop of armed foes to every virtue that can contribute to 
 promote the social elevation and national prosperity of our young 
 ('Onfederacy. And moreover, tliere seems to be an awful loose- 
 ness about your morals generally. You say, when in trade one 
 man swindles another, "' it is onlij a mere case of fraud. ' ' That 
 is true, and when one man knocks another down and rifles his 
 pockets, it is otd>/ a mere case of robbery, and when one man with 
 malice prepense blows another man's branis out, it is only a mere 
 case of murder, si\id when you denounce as "thieves," "rob- 
 bers" and "nuirderers" men who havo left their homes to come 
 here to deleud your home, but hud never comniilted thefl, rob- 
 
80 ' 
 
 bery or murder, it was only a inere case of contemptible slander 
 and mean ingratitude. What may not be the effect of this cri- 
 minal levity of yours about '^a mere case of fraud,'' ^ in callings 
 that you extol to the skies, and ^^ applaud to the very echo." 
 Will not millions plunge headlong right into the deepest depths 
 of swindling and cheating, and exclaim, if they are caught, ''in 
 the language of deacon W. M. it is only a mere case of fraud. ^^ 
 
 .Vimia illaec licentia, 
 
 Profeclo evadet in aliquod magnum malum. 
 
 (Such excessive licentiousness will most certainly terminate 
 in some great mischief.) Heavens and earth! just think of what 
 a spectacle we shall soon present. With cheating, swindling, 
 and profane swearing, inculcated by the example and connivance 
 of our prominent deacons, our fame as cheats, swindlers and pro- 
 fane swearers will soon ''rise out of obscurity into world wide 
 notoriety," and not only will mere cases of fraud and blasphemy 
 be "mightily increased, but they being the parent of many other 
 crimes, every sluice of iniquity will fly open, and every vice 
 rush unfettered and uncontrolled through the land," and then 
 indeed, verily may we expect that we certainly will '^attract the 
 wrathful curse of the Lord Jehovah. And if you designed such 
 a result and rejoice at it, well may you exclaim in the language 
 of the epitaph of Sir Christopher Wrenn — Si mo7iumentum re- 
 quiris circumspice — (if you would behold my monument look 
 around you.) 
 
 " Wiil all greut Neptune's ocean wash this blood . 
 Clean from thy hand?" And, 
 
 "Can such things be, 
 And overcome us like a summer cloud 
 Without our special wonder," 
 
 Deprendi miseruni est, says Horace and I dare say you are 
 realizing the truth of his words, and I dare say, moreover, that 
 the vulture, remorse, is tearing with crimson beak and bloody 
 talons, the quivering liver of yoitr guilty conscience. I some- 
 times think, when I remember that there is such a thing as 
 ''sinning ignorantly," therefore, innocently, that you would 
 have made a good member of Absalom's band as it would seem, 
 that to this controversy you "went forth and knewiwt anything^'''' 
 and I am warmly inclined to acquit you of all complicity with 
 cheats, swindlers and profane swearers, but then again when I 
 reflect that there is but one calling that is either willing to, or sus- 
 ceptible of, being made honest, and you oppose making it so, and 
 that while I never met in my life with a man depraved enough 
 to advocate gambling; you speak of plausibihties "so often heard 
 among the advocates of tliis practice," and of their often ex- 
 pressed "wishes" clearly indicating that you are the habitue of 
 
81 
 
 the same resorts they are, and mingle with them, my mind re- 
 curs at once to the devouring passion with which you seem to 
 hone after ahnsive epithets, and '' as a mere case of fraud'''' then 
 passes ''belore my mental eye," I find that however wiHing the 
 spirit of my faith may be to stand by your shortcomings, the flesh 
 is too weak, and I abandon the rickety fort of your character as in- 
 defensible, or iiiiothcr words, bound to cost more to defend than 
 it would be worth, especially after it would be riddled, as riddled 
 it could be, by the cannon-balls and bomb-shells of the enemy. 
 Pray, sir, what is the raito justijica of all his venom and ve- 
 hemence .' Where do you find an authority that sustains the 
 eliicacy of such amarulent invective! Certainly not in that 
 beautiful maxim attributed to Seneca, to wit: gratia gratiam 
 parit (kindness begets kindness.) Nor in that equally felicitous 
 French proverb, to wit: Donees pai'olesii' ecorchent pas la languc 
 (soft words scald not the tongue.) You referred me to the ser- 
 mons and conversations of our fSaviour. Allow me to recipro- 
 cate that attention, and at the same time inquire of you, when 
 he was among men, "Agoing about doing good," relbrming sin- 
 ners and rebuking sin, on what occasion did he stoop to the em- 
 ployment of harsh and insulting epithets? I should suppose it 
 would have only taken a modicum of common sense to have 
 informed you that you could not aflVont a man and then reason 
 with him; and when you call gamblers by hard names you 
 literally emasculate the moral influence your exhortations might 
 otherwise have among them. Cicero tells us conciliat animos 
 coinitas af'abilitasque sermonis (courtesy conciliates the feehngs,) 
 whereas lis litem generat (strife begets strife,) for, says the 
 proverb, contumclia?n si dices audies (if you utter affronting 
 speeches you will have to hear them,) which has been more for- 
 cibly put by another author thus: cuteiii gerit laceratam canis 
 morda.c (a snapping dog wears a torn skin.) !So you must learn 
 how to behave yourself pleasantly or keep out of the press; bri- 
 dle either your vanity or your temper. On the threshold of this 
 discussion you appointed yourself arbiter elegantiarum, and 
 pertly '' cocked yourself up to read me a lecture upon "refined" 
 "ways" and "polite" "terms." What would our readers think 
 of )^ou now if you were to repeat the complaints you made then, 
 quis tulcrit Gracchos dc scditionc qucrentcs (who could endure 
 the Gracchi complaining of sedition.) Would they not laugh 
 to hear that Clodius accusat madios (Clodius accuses the adul- 
 terers.) There is a broad difl'erence between writing conspirito 
 and the intemperate indulgence in acrimonious adjectives and 
 criminal charges to which you condescended, (at least it would 
 have been a condescension for any one else.^ How did you 
 ever manage to work yourself up into such a tempestuous/M;we? 
 Some of your sentences remind one of volcanic eruptions of the 
 li 
 
8S 
 
 lavHR of gall and wormwood, which, as it flows down from the 
 crater of your pen, seems to burn into the face of the green earth 
 over which it rolls, '^ thief," <' robber" and "murderer." But 
 I find 1 have been neglecting for some time to number your 
 blunders as I go ''upon my way." Many of them, it is true, 
 arc too small game to shoot a figure at. They came without a 
 mission and departed without a sign, and I shal.1 not haunt you 
 MMth their ghosts. Moreover, I am afraid if I were to give you 
 a faithful picture of the grotesque deformity of your mental or- 
 ganism you might follow in the footsteps of the Grecian Acco, 
 who, being both vain and homely, upon beholding her face, for 
 the first time, ni a mirror, went raving mad. I shall, therefore, 
 content myself with calling your attention to a few more, say, a 
 dozen, among which your bigoted intolerance, as exhibited in 
 the fanatical fury with which you assail my proposition to license 
 gambling, occupies a prominent position. After denouncing it 
 as a ''nefarious proposal," which outlandish term has the scent 
 of a fish market all over it, you then go on to say, in your charac- 
 teristic vein, "when such proposals are made through the press 
 the scorn of an indignant peo})le should be hurled at the authors 
 of such plans, and whether they are designing men or ignorant 
 men, should be made to feel the scourge of the public wrath in 
 all its bitterness. Che Spczie. Now, sir, this kind of blustering 
 and bravado may sound very big up in Possum Hoher, and it 
 may be that you have got Possum Hollerdom so literally under 
 your thumb, that after such an explosion from your "potent, 
 grave and reverend", deaconship, it would be cxrano risking all 
 a man's life is worth to ever attempt to agitate the subject in that 
 vicinage again, and the inference is a fair one, that such is the 
 fact, lor if you had not been encouraged in petty despotism at 
 home you never had had to be checked tor your impudence and 
 ])resumption abroad. I dare say Possum Holler is ruled with a 
 rod of iron; that you issue your Icttre dc cachet and premmdrc 
 on your own motion, and that when your fiat is not proinptlij 
 obeyed you quote poetrij to your subordinates after this style: 
 
 ," Vou scruple, silly lout! 'tis my comnmiul, 
 My will — let lliat, sir, for a reason stand." 
 
 IStill, nevertheless, it is otherwise, «//'o .sv^Z* 5o/e, and even here, 
 in Richmond, the freedom of opinion, the hberty of the press, 
 the right of free speech and free discussion still have scattered 
 around and about par ci par la a few bold and stubborn friends, 
 who will be very apt to be found, as of yore, turning their 
 thoughts at large, 
 
 "Without a pass from Rhoderick Dliu," 
 
 (of Possum Holler. ) You may rain, if you choose, the brimstone 
 and fire of your ire on Possum Holler as long as its inhabitants are 
 
88 
 
 meek and sheepish enough to tamely submit to the piltiless peh- 
 ings of the sulphuric storm, hut whenever you attempt to launch 
 the thunder bolts of your proscription beyond the frontiers of 
 that Holler you will soon be taught, sir, of what brittle and 
 harmless material it is they are constructed; for the only echo 
 they will or can arouse fmiong a people struggling for indepen- 
 dence will be withering "^curses of hate" and red hot 'blisses 
 of scorn." Among other instances of your high handed pre- 
 sumption your attempting to usurp the judginont seat and pre- 
 side at the final trial of poor >Sheridan,and scud his soul to eter- 
 nal perdition, is the most blasphemous. All this you did, when 
 you said that he had died "^God forsaken." How do you know 
 that, my rantankerous deacon ? Did not a thief on the scaflbld re- 
 ceive a passport in the very article of death to Paradise, and how 
 do you know but that poor Richard Brinsley met with a similar 
 demonstration of Divine mercy? If you are a theosophist and 
 have had an interview with the recording angel and do speak 
 by the card, I suppose it must be so; otherwise I think it just 
 as probable that Sheridan's soul is in Abraham's bosom as that 
 the soul of a ripping and cavorting deacon ever can get there. 
 
 You say, '^Indeed I can inform '^Erskine" of what he evi- 
 dentl}?- does not know, which is, that there were games of c/iancn 
 certainli/ about the Christian era, and that money was put up as 
 now by the gamesters." Ah deacon, you are laboring under the 
 charm of a strange whim, it you suppose that I either have told 
 or ever will tell ijou, all that T know, 1 knew that the game of 
 morn was played 4000 years ago, during the reign of Osertasens 
 in Egypt, and that the ancient Egyptian King Remesis often 
 played at koUabismos with the ladies of his own household, and 
 that thousands of years ago dice were found at Thebes that evi- 
 dently belonged to the Pharonic age; all this I learned from an 
 attentive perusal of the writings of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson. 
 The dice that were used in Greece were invented by I'alamedes 
 about 1200 years belbre the Christian era. He also invented the 
 game of backgammon. 7'hen in mythological history, I knew 
 it was recorded, that Mercury played at dice with the moon and 
 won ffom her the five days of the epact which were-added to 
 complete the 36.5 days of the year. Thimble-riggers, I knew, 
 were spoken of in the earliest history we have of Egypt, and 
 Gibbon, I well remembered, had told us that Didius .lulianus 
 played at dice until a very late hour, on the night of the day his 
 elevation to the Imperial purple was ratified by the Senate; and 
 finally, I had read and not forgotten the history of a wager be- 
 tween one of the judges of Israel and his people, as it is recorded 
 in the 12th and 13th verses of the Hth chapter of Judges. Here 
 it i.s — '< And Samson said unto them, 1 Avill now put ibrth a rid- 
 dle unto yoU; if you can certainly declare it me within the seven 
 
84 
 
 (lays of the feast, and find it out, then I will give yon thirty 
 sheets and thirty change of garments. But if ye caniint declare 
 itj then shall ye give me thirty sheets and thirty change of gar- 
 ments, and they said nnto him put forth t/ii/ riddle.^^ Was a bet 
 ever stated plainer or taken quicker. Tiiink you, deacon, you 
 can put it through a landed estate illustration. Yon have a way 
 of your own of saying to personal chattels '^presto change," 
 and lo, the personalty Hashes out of existence and a "really" 
 ilashes in. Perhaps the same necromantic power that produces 
 such meruni results, might, under a slight strain, make those 
 garments Samson bet fit like a duck's foot in the mud, that illustra- 
 tion of yours which of all others is your chef (Vmin^re, The 
 truth is gambling ^^is no chicken." It counts the years of its 
 age by thousands. Humanum est errare or as the poet says : 
 "To err is human," and the habit of gambling, 1 grant you, 
 was conceived in error, brought forth in error, and has in error 
 grown gray; but, unfortunately, when error once becoiues inter- 
 woven with the customs and habits of a people, it passes from 
 generation to generation, and when it grows old, it claims and 
 seems to command the reverence due to age. "Woe betide the 
 hand," (said William Wirt,) that rashly presumes to pluck the 
 wizzard beard of hoary error, for from lisping infancy to tottering 
 age the curses, jeers and reproaches of all classes and conditions 
 of society shall rest upon it." Burns tells us that error some- 
 limes seems to have its origin in Heaven — 
 
 " I saw thy pulses madd 'ning play, 
 WiM send the pleasures devious way, 
 Misled by fancy's meteor ray, 
 
 By passion driv'n, 
 But yet the light that led astray 
 
 Was light from Heaven." 
 
 Neither wisdom or w^ealth seems to furnish any protection 
 against error. Solomon, when he was the wisest and the wealth- 
 iest man on earth, abjured the faith to which he was indebted for 
 everything, to run after Ash toreth the goddess of the Zidonians, 
 and Milcqni, the abomination of the Ammonites, and from that 
 day to this, all manner of little Solomons have been running 
 after all manner of little Ashtoreths, and committing all manner 
 of little hoary errors. When I mentioned that the roulette-table 
 at which females gambled at Saratoga, \vas kept by one Gridley, 
 you made that fact the sport of your wicked waggery, and I sup- 
 pose for having mentioned herein the names of the various cap- 
 tains commanding companies under our flag who belong to the 
 sporting fraternity, and when I mentioned, a few pages back, the 
 names of Dixon and Marcus, 1 made another bid for your face- 
 tiae, and that I will be certain to get another one of those terri- 
 ble bearded arrows of yours shot so deep into my grief-torn and 
 
85 
 
 mangled bosom, that no manner of tugging and straining can 
 ever get it out again. The only tangible basis for controversy is 
 an issue — the affirmative and negative of which must be assailed 
 or sustained by argument, the predicate of which must be data. 
 Ad Slim mam facts are the only available ammunition with which 
 you can work logical batteries. Rhetoric will do for the powder 
 (_to make a noise), but the balls must be facts. When a writer 
 or speaker in the progress of a discussion mentions dates and 
 the names of persons and places, it is bound to commend him to 
 the confidence of the reader. Whereas, if in the face of the old 
 legal maxim dnhoi vcrsatur in geiicralihus (fraud lurks in loose 
 generalities,) he presumed to deal only in vague and loose gene- 
 ralities, if it is occasionally hinted that he might be mistaken in 
 this or that statement, he can have nobody to blame but himself. 
 In Possum Holler, however, yovr generalities outrank all other 
 men's specifics. You will not find it so elsewhere, and if you 
 do not want to have the vis matrix that controls you, gravely 
 suspected, be a little more respectful for the future in your de- 
 portment toward specifics. You say in one of your last com- 
 munications : ''I said in a former communication, that Germany, 
 where gambling is legalized, is also as infidel a country as any 
 nation, within the limits of Christendom, could be." Now, sir, 
 that is not what you said at first. Here is your language : *' We 
 must legalize gambling, as the French and Germans, with their 
 notoriously low moral tone, have done. We must legalize it, a§ 
 these two infidel nations of Europe have done, for they are, per- 
 haps, the only two distinctively infidel countries on that conti- 
 nent." In this propensity you have for changing your language 
 and positions, you remind me of the Norwegian bear, who, when 
 her cubs are whelped deformed, licks them into shape, I dare 
 say if this controversy were to last twelve months before it closed, 
 you would testify yourself that there were gamblers who were not 
 only human beings, but noble fellows, and deny stoutly that you 
 had ever intended to call them thieves, robbers and murderers. 
 Among the numerous collateral issues which the light shed by 
 your erratic pen seems to hatch, as it is said the sun hatches, 
 in certain latitudes, gnats and musqnitoes, in certain seasons, the 
 infidelity of France and Germany was among the first that came 
 out of its shell. I proved that they were Catholic nations, and 
 peremptorily denied that skepticism had ever poisoned the high 
 and learned sources from whence their legal fountains flowed, 
 and to this prominent and important fact I pointedly and repeat- 
 edly attracted your special attention, and called upon you loud 
 and long for your proof, that an isolated skeptic had anything to 
 do with the enactment or enforcement of the law under discus- 
 sion. This music you never did have the nerve to face, and yet 
 you have the face — (<' still hafping on my daughter,") to perti- 
 
86 
 
 naciously insist that the infidels of France and Germany are re- 
 sponsible for- a law, with the enactment or enforcement of which 
 I have again and again challenged you to show any infidel great 
 or small, ever had or now has anything whatever to do. Surely, 
 you must have a sneaking notion of reenacting the fable of the 
 wolf and the lamb, and proving the truth of the maxim, homo 
 homini lupus. En passant, I have discovered, I suspect, Cest 
 le mot de Venigme, (the key to the mystery.) It is tlte fact that 
 the lambs you are hunting down are Catholic lambs, and you, 
 sir, beyond all doubt, are a Protestant wolf, inde irae, for I dare 
 say that it is, when the revocation of the edict of Nantes and 
 the massacre of St. Bartholomew pass before that "mental 
 eye" of yoiu's, that you set up such a doleful and unearthly howl 
 in pursuit of these lambs, one would naturally suppose from the 
 zeal and certitude with which you, without equivocation or quaU- 
 fication, assert the infidelity of France and Germany, that you 
 were not only thoroughly familiar with their history, but that 
 you had been for many years a sojourner among those peoples, 
 and an indefatigable student of their laws, religions, manners, 
 customs and habits. How else, inquires the reader, could a man 
 know so much and know it so well. It seems, however, that 
 you have gathered your prejudices against them in Possum Hol- 
 ler, and from such inklings of tattle and driblets of loose talk 
 as could be extracted from such strolling Frenchmen as you 
 chance to travel with in visiting about among the neighboring 
 Hollers, £Jcce siffnu??i, '' Whoever travels for a few hours (from 
 one Holler to another) with a Frenchman who represents the ave- 
 rage opinion and feeling of France, will see that that nation at large 
 have hardly heard of Christianity, 6fc.''^ Walter Scott never 
 made his poor drivelling idiot ^ Simon Gallately, mumble over 
 such peurile twaddle as this, and the Devil never sent from the 
 infernal regions one of his own imps with a misrepresentation 
 in charge more utterly bald, graceless and gross. Fortunately, 
 however, the imbecility of a writer capable of such flatulent 
 inanity cries trumpet-tongued, ^'■caveat emptor,''^ to the cre- 
 dulity of the reader. And you happily illustrate the truth of 
 the proverb dat Deus immiti cornua curta bovi, (God gives short 
 horns to the vicious ox.) You wring the changes on the origin 
 of this law I suggested, with remarkable energy. Its coming 
 from France and Germany you contend is alone sufficient to seal 
 its everlasting, just damnation and preclude now and forever its 
 adoption by any of the Confederate States. Now let us pursue 
 this reasoning in the direction you insist it shall go. France 
 and Germany foster their internal resources, develop their na- 
 tional strength, protect industrialpursuits, and flatter the arts and 
 sciences. They fight their enemies and thrash them. They 
 adhere to that international comity known as the law of nations, 
 
87 
 
 and obey it. They have courts of justice, through the judg- 
 ments and processes of which they coerce the payment of just 
 debts and punish crime. They clothe the naked, feed the fa- 
 mishing, and nurse the sick. They hvc in houses, eat bread 
 and meat, and wear clothes. Now, suppose your reasoning to 
 be worth the shadow of a Scotch haubee, if we do one of these 
 things we are bound to be damned inevitably and everlastingly 
 damned. We must ignore the law of nations, put chains on 
 the arts and sciences, license murder, theft, rape and robbery, 
 because if we do not we will be imitating France and Germany, 
 and will surely draw down upon us the "wrath of the Lord Je- 
 hovah." The French and (Germans in times gone by, have en- 
 dured the terrible torments of famine unto death, and in other 
 cases set fire to their forts and cities and perished in the lianies 
 before they would surrender to an enemy. I suppose you would 
 have our forts and cities hang out a white flag before they are 
 beleaguered, and would interpose between the firebrand anil the 
 cotton bale, and tobacco casque, the objection that there is se- 
 rious danger in it, because of the resemblance it must wear 
 to the conduct of those silly infidels.- In fine, we must live on 
 lierbs and in tents as the Arabs do, and go out into the world in 
 puris naturalibus (stark naked) just because those miserable, im- 
 pertinent, forward and "nefarious" infidels live in houses, eat 
 bread and meat and conceal their trilling bodies in clothes. Yet 
 strange to say in France and Germany there are less drunkards, 
 nmrderers and gawhlcrs than there are in America. These are 
 statistical facts. WiuU will you do widi them. I am somewhat 
 puzzled to decide which deserves the most signal reprobation 
 your niggardly illiberality towards France, or your execrable in- 
 gratitude to Germany. No man has ever yet been held accounta- 
 ble among men for the ravings of insanity. Yet you point to 
 what France did during the reign of terror — when she was in 
 the throes of a frantic plu'enzy, and her institutions were lost in 
 chaotic anarchy, in order to put upon her the stigma of infidelity; 
 and now, sir, in order to sting your compunction to the quick, 
 if you haw any compunction and that has any quick, I will call 
 on you before the world to answer the two following questions: 
 Firstly. If any man was elevated to power during the reign ol" 
 terror because he tms an infidel, who was it? Secondly. If any 
 man lost his li/c during the reign of terror because he was noiaii 
 infidel, who Avas it.' You certainly have never read the history 
 oJ" tli(! French revolution and uiuil you do I hope and trust you 
 will have no more to say about it. 'J'hat you are a Protestant is 
 self evident, that you are deacon is remotely probable. If, how- 
 ever, you are a Protestant deacon, why under Heaven do you 
 brand with infidelity the country, but for the Christianity of 
 which you would either be without any rehgion at all, an infidel 
 
88 
 
 or a Papist to-day- 'Twas on German soilj sir, the Reformation 
 was born. 'Twas Martin Luther, sir, who invaded the papal 
 cells in which the Bible had been buried, in monastic seclusion, 
 for more than a thousand years; struck off its fetters, forged them 
 into weapons, and fought with them its way to freedom and to 
 fame. Yet in the face of this fact and ten thousand other facts 
 which conspire to prove Germany a CI iristian country, you shout 
 ''^infidelity," ''infidelity," against hi^r, exactly as the Jewish 
 rabble of old, when no crime could be proven against our Lord 
 and Saviour, cried — " crucify him," " c rucify him." You ask if 
 Richmond will not compare favorably ^^rith Baden- Baden. Well, 
 sir, you have asked a fliir question, and you are entitled to a 
 frank answer. If I were to dodge it I should be guilty of the 
 same unmanly disingenuousness for whi ch I have already pointed, 
 at you 
 
 " The slow unmoving finger of hiorn." 
 
 We, sir, are at this time engaged in a glorious struggle for 
 light, liberty and life. Those dear to u.s as "light and life" 
 have left the homes of which they were the hope and stay, and 
 gone forth to lay down thefr precious, youn g and fresh lives, that 
 we may be free. They are enduring the pi ivations of the camp, 
 braving the perils of the "embattled plain," and running the 
 gauntlet of camp diseases, in defence of ou r honor and to secure 
 our happiness, and on this high and holy mission they are 
 stricken down daily, on the right and on tb e left, some with one 
 disease, some with another, and some with the bullets of the 
 foe; yet if you were to visit one of our fashionable hotels after 9 
 o'clock on almost any evening in the week, you would find as- 
 sembled there as gay and hilarious a company as ever met at Ba- 
 den-Baden, enjoying, what in the elegant parlance of the times 
 is termed '-'a hop." Yes, sir, when they were evacuating Nash- 
 ville they were dancing in Richmond. Terror reigned in one 
 place, and 
 
 "On with the dance, let joy be unconfined," 
 
 was the cry in the other. Now, sir, whatever happened in Ba- 
 den that you can produce as a Roland for such an Oliver. You 
 charge me with having said that a chance was a "rea%." I 
 never made any such a ridiculous assertion. It seems to be your 
 continuous misfortune to employ terms of the significance of 
 which you are ignorant, and to employ your ignorance upon 
 terms totally destitute of significance. That which you attempt 
 to present you evidently misunderstand, and that which you can- 
 not misunderstand you almost invariably misrepresent. For in- 
 stance, you speak of the veiy " high opinion" 1 entertain for the 
 colloquial gifts, &.c. of certain gamblers, whereas I never have 
 expressed an opinion upon thai subject. Wha^t I said I stated 
 
89 
 
 not as an opinion, but a fact. To escape the force, liowever, of 
 Tifact^ which you dare not deny, you call it an opinion, and at- 
 tempt to saddle nic with it. To treat an able opinion as a fact if 
 as a fact you could disprove it, would be decidedly cute, but to 
 treat a simple fact as an opinion, only because, as an opinion, 
 you can ridicule it, but as a fact you cannot^ is worthy only of 
 the special pleading of Possum Holler. A fact is tangible, an 
 opinion is not. You can plead the general issue to the one, but 
 only a set-off to the other. Facts have a substantive existence, 
 whereas opinions are merely ephemeral. I have often known 
 disputants, when hard pressed for evidence, to attempt to wedge 
 in an opinion for a fact, but you are the first one I ever met bold 
 enough to attempt to shrivel a fact down to an opinion. Why 
 did you do it? Was it a ruse or the result of unaffected stupi- 
 dity. If it was a ruse, it was an admission in the first place 
 that they are facts you cannot disprove, and secondly, that you 
 seriously dread the force with which you are apprehensive they 
 will surely strike the public mind. If it was honest stupidity, 
 why you 
 
 "Still in despite 
 Of nature and the stars will write," 
 
 must excite no little amazement. You intimate that I have been 
 guilty of a fatal folly in speaking of gamblers in terms " to which 
 men are not habituated." Whatever I have to say is subject to 
 but one rule. That rule simply requires that whatever is spoken 
 or written, must be the truth. Aura popularis, I never court 
 what the public iL-a7it to hear., what vi'iW pay best or secure the 
 greatest extent of popularity, I never, I may say, salvo pudore, 
 pause to inquire. If then, sir, you have not habituated your 
 people in your sequestered ravine, to hear the truth, until' you 
 can show where the truth or myself is to blame for that you have no 
 just grounds on which to pick a quarrel with us about it, and until 
 you can refute a statement never marvel at its strangeness. 
 There is a distinction between men who occasionally gamble 
 and professional '< sports." A man may gamble even frequently 
 ■without being justly regarded as a gambler. It is only tliose who 
 gamble for a livelihood who are gamesters. A farmer may go 
 hunting or fishing every day in the week, but if he tills his farm 
 for a livelihood, he is neither a huntsman or a fisherman. And a 
 farmer just in the same way can play cards for money very fre- 
 quently and still be a farmer. You say that there is not more 
 than ten per cent of our people who are gamesters. That is an 
 egregious blunder. The truth is there is not three per cent of 
 our people who are gamesters. But when you say that not more 
 than one in ten of our people gamble yoti blunder again, for out 
 of Possum Holler there are communities where 99 in 100 who 
 are out of the church (and some who are in it) do occasionally 
 12 
 
90 
 
 gamble. You ask ''is there a law-abiding, proper businessman 
 in Richmond or elsewhere in Virginia, who does not repel such 
 a proposal (to license gambling) with indignation?" Yes, sir, 
 there are thousands of Virginia's best citizens who think and 
 say that gambling ought to be licensed. Some of her wisest and 
 purest statesmen say so. The Senate of Louisiana bas passed a 
 bill licensing gambling since this controversy commenced. How- 
 much the long catalogue oi faux pas you have perpetrated in 
 this discussion, may have contributed to bring about that result 
 I cannot say, but it is certainly so. Gambling has been licensed 
 for about ten years in California. Vvhen General , Scott took 
 Vera Cruz and the City of Mexico and put Governors over them 
 under our military governments, gambling was licensed in both 
 places. The roulette was licensed in North Carolina forty years 
 ago, and billiard tables, where men gamble every day for at 
 least the price of a game of billiards, are licensed already in Vir- 
 ginia. You may say the sum is small for which men gamble at 
 billiards. That is very true, but the principle is the same, and 
 if you attempt to defend it on that ground, you will land pre- 
 cisely where a candidate for Congress did in Vermont, who re- 
 plied when his adversary taunted him with tlie fact that his sis- 
 ter was the mother of a bastard child, " 1 don't care if sister Sal 
 did have a bastard child, it was nothing but a little bit of a thing 
 anyhow, and she jiever would have had that if other people had let 
 her alone." Laws too severe are as fruidess of virtue as are 
 those which are too loose to be effective. There is a modus ifi 
 rebus and in my humble judgment the license system in this in- 
 stance would prove to be that jusle 'milieu. Hie est aut nusquam 
 quod ([uwrimus , (that which we seek is here or nowhere.) The 
 poet tells us 
 
 " Some certain mean in all things may be found, 
 To mark our virtues and our rices bound." 
 
 If gambling is to be put down at all, it must be by a law that will 
 Jiotseem to wiw at that purpose. <'Mr. Pitt," says Colton, ''at a 
 moment when the greatest jealousy existed in the country on the 
 subject of the freedom of the press, inflicted a mortal blow on 
 this guardian of our liberties -without seeming to touch or even to 
 aim at it; he doubled the tax upon all advertisements, and this 
 single act immediately knocked up all the host ot pamphleteers 
 who formed the sharp-shooters and tiraelleurs of literature, and 
 whose fire struck more terror into his administration than the 
 heaviest cannonade from bulky quartos and folios could produce; 
 the former were ready for th§ moment, but before the latter could 
 be loaded and brought to bear, the object was either changed or 
 removed, and had ceased to awaken the jealousies or to excite 
 the tears of the nation." In order to ascertain wliat means can 
 
91 
 
 be made the most available in the suppression of gambling, we nmst look into 
 fo7is et origo (the causes which produce it.) What are they. First. An uiiquencli- 
 able thirst in the human bosom for excitement. Secondly. Avarice. Thirdly. 
 The cringing awe with which a boot-licking world plnys the toady to opulence. 
 Fourthly. The supercilious contempt with which' that same obsequious world (to 
 tiie rich) regard poverty. Fifthly. The fabulous percent, swindling in gambling 
 pays. Sixthly. The impunity that seems to be the prerogative of that popular 
 species of swindling, and lastly, the universal popularity of the vice of gambling. 
 In the first place, then, why do men run after music, eloquence, anecdote, negro 
 minstrels, and harlequinery. Why do men listen with more strict attention to 
 an inflammatory harangue, that may not be argumentative, than to a prosaical 
 discourse, that is, to an anecdote than to a prayer, to an extravaganza than to a lec- 
 ture, or derive more pleasure from pantomimic drollery than from Hamlet, or hear- 
 ing an opera they do not understand than from reading an essay they do. Simply 
 because the great desideratum of life is excitement. This is reponsc sans rrpliqne, 
 and the very same reason which humbles the genius of Avon's mighty hard at the 
 dirty footstool of Punch and Judy, asserts the dominion of faro over all other 
 pastimes, to wit, its exhaustless resources for excitement. It was introduced into 
 France to arouse and fire the spiritless and feeble intellect of King Charles the 
 Seventh, and whenever his ministers of State wanted his assent to any measure 
 of public importance, they would get Agnes Sorrel to set his mind in a blaze with 
 a game of faro, and he would soon be put in possession of all the capacity with 
 which he was endowed. Secondly, on the power of avarice amor uummi — nuri 
 sacra fame, 1 can summon into court witnesses from all ages of time, aye, from 
 even beyond that food, and from every clime under vhe sun, to prove the tyranny 
 of this sordid passion. One poet tells us 
 
 And another, that- 
 Virgil exclaims: 
 
 " Corroding care and thirst of more 
 Attends the still increasing store." 
 
 " Few gain to live, (pray listen,) few or none, 
 But blind with avarice, live to gain alone." 
 
 Quid nan moi'ialia pectora cogie, 
 Aiiri sacra /a»»w. 
 
 (Accurst thirst for gold, to what dost thou not urge the human heart.) Hear- 
 ken to the ravings of Shylock: 
 
 My daugliter! my ducats — my daughter, 
 Fled with a Christian! -0 my Christian ducats. 
 Justice! the lawl my ducats and my daughter. 
 
 '• Why, there, there, there I a diamond gone cost me 2000 ducats in Frankfort ! 
 The curse never fell upon my nation till now. I never felt it till now: — 2000 du- 
 cats in that; and other precious, precious jewels. 1 would my daughter were 
 dead at my foot and the ducats in her coffin. 
 
 The whole human race is affected with scabiem ct contagia lucri, (the contagious 
 itch for gain.) Hominis, (truthfully says Justinian) quo plura habent eo ampliora 
 cupiunt (the more we have the more we want.) It was Lord Bacon's avarice 
 that made Pope satirize him as the "meanest of mankind." 'Twas avarice that 
 made Marlboro a boorish brute, and the Duke of Alva a bloody butcher, and it is 
 that self-same consuming flame which swarms the gambling saloons of Richmond 
 to-day with eager and hungry patrons, and always will do it 
 '• While circling time moTCs round in an eternal sphere," 
 
 In the third place volumes of testimony can be piled on volumes mountain high* 
 to prove the abject, cringing servility with which a world of moral dastards fawn 
 upon and flatter the opulent. Gold is a God, worshipped, the world round and 
 over, without a temple, an altar or a hypocrit. Listen to Horace: 
 
 " Omnitt (enim) rM 
 rirtH)i,fama decuK, ditina humamtqiie yndrrU 
 /'iritiiH jiarent.^'' 
 
 which poetically interpreted runs thus: 
 
 "Now virtue, glory, beauty, all divine, 
 
 ▲ad humftu pg^erg, immortal gold are thine," 
 
92 
 
 Cpes (says Ovid) irritmnenla malorum, (riches are the incentive to every kind of 
 wickedness,) which is corroborated by the old Italian proverb dove I'oro parla, og- 
 ni lingua tact, and the latin maxim auro loquente nihil pallet qiucxns alio, (the sub- 
 stance of both of which is gold ^ilences reason. Another one of the muses testi- 
 fies thus: 
 
 " Stronger than thunder's wingeit force 
 
 All powerful gold can speed its course, 
 
 Through watchful guards its passage make, 
 
 And loves through solid walls to break." 
 
 Gibbon tells us that after the Prsetorian Guards assassinated the Emperor Per- 
 tinax, they determined to put up the diadem of the Cjesars at auction, and that 
 the Emperorship of the haughty mistress of the world was actually knocked off at 
 public outcry to the highest bidder, who Avas an old epicurean millionaire, whose 
 name was Didius Julianus. An obsequious and time-serving Senate ratified the 
 sale, and albeit the superannuated old debauche, only wore the purple 66 days, 
 when Severus made him take it off somewhat like a Southern overseer makes a 
 refractory African shuck his linen at his bidding. Yet impartial history must 
 hand him down to the last hour of expiring time among Rome's Emperors, and 
 is it not recorded in Holy Writ that for thirty pieces of silver one Judas iscariot 
 sold the life of his Lord and Master. Do you tell me that man is not as de- 
 praved as he was then, 1 tell you he is more so, and if Judas Iscariot were on earth 
 to-day, he would be a gentleman in comparison with some specimens of his own 
 race, and some other races too, who are here. Thirty pieces of stiver. Why, 
 sir, that sum nowi?i silver could purchase a kiss to betray the Messiah, if he was 
 on earth, and a kiss a-piece for each one of his disciples. Look around you and 
 scrutinize the conduct of your fellow men who speak the same tongue and pretend 
 to worship the same God you do, and you will find money working moral miracles as 
 astounding as were ever wrought in the physical world by divine inspiration. You 
 will find parents coercing their daughters to go to the altar with men they know 
 they loathe, thereby becoming a party to the rape of their own helpless children. 
 . 'Tis in vain that the child on bended knees piteously prays for deliverance from 
 "these hated nuptials." Master Walters are "few and far between." The 
 trade has been struck, and the brutal bridegroom demands to the letter his bond 
 in flesh. Tears may stream in torrents, moans, and groans, and screams may 
 v/ail the dirge of a broken heart, nevertheless the ravisher being rich, and having 
 paid for his prize (in being rich) the rape must and does proceed. What is the 
 proper ligh't in which to regard a marriage where the female consents to wed 
 only because the bridegroom is wealthy. She does not pretend to love him, but 
 thinks she can learn to respect him, (which is not as much as it is said the Parisian 
 courtesans do, for many of them do love their paramours.) It amounts simply to 
 a contract to live with a man until one or the other dies, as children may be one 
 of the results of this arrangement, and as society has some ridiculously fastidious 
 notions about the forms of law, in order to legitimatise the children and flatter the 
 conventionalities of society, a Jormal ceremony is gone through with, and after 
 that is over they are regarded legally as man and wife, when animo et facto she is 
 but his mistress and living with him in legalized prostitution. She has driven a 
 right sharp trade. She has managed to remain in genteel society, to protect her 
 children against illegitimacy, and she has avoided the vicissitudes and the infamy 
 of a harlot's life, notwithstanding she is as unmitigated a harlot as ever paraded 
 her charms in market to tantalize the hot blood of lecherous youth. Who can 
 wonder, then, when we see what gold has done, and know what gold can do, that 
 men will gamble to accumulate it; more especially, when on the other hand, in 
 the fourth place, we remember how the poor and humble always have been re- 
 garded and treated by the heartless and haughty. 
 
 "See yonder poor, o'erlabored wight, 
 ^ So abject, mean and vile. 
 
 Who begs a brother of the earth 
 To give him leave to toil ! 
 And see his lord'y fellow worm 
 
 The poor petition spurn, 
 Unmiudful tho' a weeping wife 
 And helpless offspring mourn." 
 
 No man could report the condition of his finances with figures any better than 
 Burns did in these lines: 
 
93 
 
 "I've seen sae monip chnngefu' year*, 
 On earth I am u .stranger grown ; 
 1 wiiniler in ttie ways of men, 
 Alike unknowing and iink'noicn, 
 Vnhearii, v/ijiitied, ^itireliered, 
 I bear alane my lade o' care, 
 For silent, low, on beds of dust 
 Lie a' that would my sorrows share. 
 
 TIiP poor may be pure and upright; 
 
 "But then to see how the're neftleekit 
 How hulT'd and cuffed and disrespeckit. 
 
 « * « * 4< « 
 
 I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, 
 ^n' mony a time my heart's been wae. 
 Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
 J(ow they maun thole a factor's snash : 
 He'll stanip and threaten, curse and swear. 
 He'll apjirehend them, poined their gear, 
 While they maun stan' wi aspect humble, 
 An' bear it a' an' fear an' tremble, 
 
 And another poet has said : 
 
 "When smllinsr fortune spreads her golden rajr 
 All crowd around tn flatter and obey ; 
 But when she thunderji from an angry sky, 
 Our friends, our llattercrs and our lovers fly." 
 
 Paupertas (says Lnc&n) fitgilur toloque arcessitur or&<, (poverty is shunned and 
 persecuted, and looked upon as a crime all over the world.) Horace on the same 
 point says : 
 
 ifognum pnup^rifA opprobrium juhet 
 Quidris et/iicoere ei pad. 
 
 (Poverty, which is considered a great reproach, forces us to attempt or submit 
 to anything.) It was what the ploughman bard had seen the trampled poor suf- 
 • ler under the grinding heel of the rich, which made him exclaim • 
 
 I " Man's inhumanity to man 
 
 Makes countless thousands mourn." 
 
 And we all know that 
 
 " Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool, 
 And wit in rags is turned to" ridicule. 
 That high (lescent and meritorious deeds, 
 Umblest with wealth are viler than sea weeds." 
 
 Marvel, then, who can ! at the craigne: honfe with which sensitive pride recoils 
 from this moral cobra capella poverty. Terror-stricken and appalled at the threat 
 of his deadly fang, thousands have fled xtsque ad aras— to the very horns of the 
 altars of chance for protection. Before entering upon the discussion if the fifth 
 cause which is productive of gaming, inasmuch as faro is the monarch of all 
 games of chance at cards, ^will have something to say specially of it. The 
 name by which it was known in Egypt when Pharoah was on the Egyptian throne 
 was Turgot, (see Noel's French dictionary of events and inventions) and one 
 theory about the derivation of its name is, that the name "Faro" Was substituted 
 for Turgot to flatter King Pharaoh and propitiate his patronage. Another is that 
 itscognonien is derived from the Greek /oros which means fire, because of the fire 
 with which it consumes the human feelings, and it was the opinion of Mar- 
 quis de La Fayette, who introduced the game on this continent and played it in 
 the presence and in the marquee of the Father of his Country, that tliis is the 
 more plausible derivation. There is still another, however. It seems that be- 
 tween Italy and Sicily there is a strait called Faro of Messina, where the tide ebbs 
 and flows every six hours, and the fickleness of lucks tides in Faro where it ebbs 
 and flows every six minutes, furnishes a felicitous illustration of the whimsicalness 
 of the tides of Faro de Messina, and the game may have derived its name from 
 that fact. It is only, however, when it is honestly plaved that it is characterized 
 by so many mutations. In it, Ihen, there is not a tri'ck that approximates the 
 slightest similitude to what is termed a legitimate finesse. You can choose the 
 card on which you will bet, it has but two places to fall and you can choose which 
 one of those places you will bet it will fall. Not a word is spoken, not a lie is 
 told, not a deception is practised. There is ia it what is technically termed 
 
94 
 
 ••splits" and "cases." The "splits" give the dealer an advantage of about five 
 per cent, but you can avoid them by betting only on the "cases," when the result 
 is purely a matter of luck on which there is no per cent. When, however, a sport- 
 ing Neptune waves the trident of fraud over his Faro-box, its tide can be made 
 to flow with the resistless volume and velocity of the gulf stream. 
 
 " Like to the I'ontiac sea 
 Whose icy current and compulsive course 
 Ne'er feels retiring ebb but keeps due on 
 To the Propontic and the Uellespont." 
 
 Luck vanishes, then, and the result is the offspring of texir d'addresse, and the 
 dealers' advantage is so incalculable that "few and far between are the men who, 
 goaded by the spur of avtirice, proscribed by the frown of society, flattered by 
 the siren songs of Mammon, threatened by the fatal fangs of the hooded 
 snake, poverty, and deterred by no legal penalty, possess the nerve to resist the 
 dazzling temptation to perpetrate fraud, such enormous profits holds out to frail 
 flesh. Les verhis (says Rouchfaucald) se perdent dans I'interet, comme lesfleuves se 
 perdent dans la mer, (our virtues lose themselves in our interest, as the rivers lose 
 themselves in the ocean,) and it has been truly said — 
 
 "The man who thirsts for gold hath left the i)ost, 
 Where virtue placed him and his arms hath lost." 
 
 And Juvenal bluntly asks Quidsalvis infamia nummis , (what matters infamy so long 
 as your cash is safe,) and appropos are these lines too : 
 
 "For though compelled beyond the Tiber's flood, 
 To move your tanyard, swear the smell is good, 
 Mj'rrh cassia, and frankincense; and wisely think 
 That wJiat is hicriitive. can- never i<Unk.^^ 
 
 Which fully accords with Juvenal's idea, to wit — lucvi bonus est odor ex re qualibet 
 (the smell of gain is good from anything whatever,) which must of course include 
 cards and dice, and the same sentiment is taught in the lines, 
 
 "Ye grovelling louts let money first be sought, 
 A'irtue is only worth a second thought." 
 
 "Get wealth and power if possible with grace. 
 If not by any means get wealth and place." 
 ******* 
 
 My friend get money get a large estate. 
 By honest means, but get, at any rate. 
 ******* 
 
 "Rarely they rise by virtue's aid who lie 
 Plunged in the depths of hej-jess poverty." 
 
 (You certainly must admit, sir, that I am making up for my neglect of Perseus.) 
 In the sixth place there are som.e crimes which are malum in se, and others which 
 are only malum prohibitum, and it is to the latter class gaming belongs. I never 
 said that gambling had always been a crime of "no ordinary magnitude." When 
 Barsabas and Matthias gambled, it was no crime^t all. It had not then been 
 proliibited. When God gave the decalogue to Moses on Sinai's flaming summit, 
 he did Tiot proscribe gambling, and it is not inhibited in the old or new Testament, 
 and the laws of Virginia tolerate it to-day (on the turf.) Per se it is not a crime 
 neither of one magnitude or another. Legislators have made dealing Faro a crime, 
 but it took Legislation to do it. Why, then, I ask did the Legislators of Virginia 
 make that a crime, which the all-wise Ruler of the Universe did not in the omni- 
 science of his infallible wisdom, designate as such. For the sin'iple reason that 
 the craft and cupidity of man has introduced into all manner of gaming, so much 
 subtlety and villainy, that to prevent the one they thought they had to forbid the 
 other, and that is precisely where they blundered, and ichy they failed. If gam- 
 bling always had been conducted honestly it never had been forbidden legally, 
 and the stupendous blunder upon which the Legislatures of all the States have 
 stumbled, is that they have forbidden gambling, which is not when honestly con- 
 ducted per se a crime, and refused to forbid gambling frauds which are not only 
 malum in se, (for the 8th commandment says thou shall not steal, and between 
 swindling at cards and stealing the difference is purely technical.) but makes gam- 
 bling criminal, the final result of which is that they have refused to license gam- 
 bling but have licensed swindling in it — placed integrity at a discount, and offered 
 a premium for swindling. Aud when the laws tolerate cheating, and cheating 
 
95 
 
 pays enormous profits, and men who are poor are despised while the rich are li- 
 onised because of their riches, can it excite surprise that avaricious men gamble 
 and swindle. "Lead us not into temptation," was the prayer of a God. Yet, 
 sir, you and your i'analical aiders and abettors of swindling at cards set before 
 frail and feeble liesh the seductive temptation to swindle, which are to be found 
 in manunotii proliis and untrammeled impunity, and then talk of rousing the bench, 
 and rousing the bar, and rousuig the pulpit, and rousing the people against gan\- 
 bling, and you mi.t;lit just as well talk about rousing a ft-athcr to check the head- 
 long sweep o( a prairie (ire before a Northwestern tornado. 1 am told that nothing 
 is more provcrhial in Richmond than that gamblers are the most devoted of hus- 
 bands and tender of fathers. They spare no pecuniary sacrifice to secure to their 
 homes comfort, or to their children the accomplishments of education. They 
 reason thus wise, man's life is but a span; to-morrow I shall be in my grave and 
 forgotten. Wealth is tlie standard of merit. If I leave my children rich their 
 coteniporaries/vill not ask irlio was his or her/(///ifr, but vliat is he or she icorllt, 
 and I will see to it that the answer to that question shall be satisfactory. By a 
 little swindling I can coin a fortune. There is no law against swindling, and 
 that fortune 1 will at once proceed to coin. Abolish this swindling and you 
 will breaU up all such speculations. Cheating is of no modern origin. Laban 
 swindled Jacob when he contracted to give him for seven years' labor his beauti- 
 ful daughter Kachcl, and then palmed olf on him her sore-eyed sister Leah, and 
 then .lacob got even willi Luban by swindling him en revanckc in that trick he 
 
 flayed on his cattle, by which he caused their young to be spotted and striped, 
 n f'^ct, Jacob seems to have been bornaswindler — he swindled his poor old blind 
 f;ither out of his blessing, and his own brother out of his binhright; and those 
 rascally Israelites that made that bet with Samson won it by a fraud, as his an- 
 swer proves, to wit, "and he said unto them, if ye had not ploughed with my 
 heifer ye had not found out my riddle," and from that day to this all manner of 
 men have been ploughing with all manner of heifers, and the law which you arc 
 
 !)leased to brand in a windy way as a "nefarious proposal" will stop this heifer 
 )us!ness; yet you are opposed to it, ergo in favor of ploughing with other peo^de's 
 heifers. Of ibis you may rest assured, that until the heifer business is stopped 
 the riddle business will go on, but license the one and yon will diminish it and 
 stop the other, as William Pitt, when he taxed advertisements muzzled the press. 
 There is but one basis on which any business can keep its place among popular 
 avocations, and that is its profits. Cut down the profits of gambling, and you 
 will break down the business. As the law now stands, if you are swindled 
 at cards it is morally a high crime, but as it occurred at a game of cards, which 
 is also legally a crime, you having been ])articeps criminis in one, have to submit to 
 the other, firrlerc vdandiim est. scclus, (one crime has to hide another;) and more- 
 over oinnc magnus conlriet In sc minus, (the greater contains the less.) Of this state 
 of things there are those who live onl}' tu avail themselves. Make card frauds 
 felonies, and j'ou will proselyte all such votaries. They only play when it will 
 pay. Fair play is slow pay. l^oul play fat and fast pay. Cut off cheating a1 
 cards and tlie clieraHcr (t'luiluslrie. will cut the calling. It is tlie impunily swindling 
 enjoys that plays the part of the wilef serpent in the garden, and holds out to hungry 
 avarice the forbidden fruit, and wliocan wonder that the fruit is grabbed greedily 
 and devoured voraciously, when the grabber and biter knows there is no hell I 
 nay, not even a purgatory. If then you mean to legislate to any purpose you 
 must hold up before these wayward descendants of Adam and Eve the terrors of 
 a nakedness that fig leaves can never hide. There is an old Frisian proverb which 
 says deer de. mint vul yle mot ze krecke, (be who will eat the nut must crack it) or 
 as the Latin poet has it, qui e nuce nuctiuni eise vull, frang;al tuirem, (he n ho would 
 eat the kernel must crack tlic shell.) Yet our f^egisluturesseem to thiidc that they 
 run get at the kernel of one nut by cracking the shell of another, and accordingly 
 they have made that a crime which was not a crime, and refused to puni>h as a 
 crime that wliicli is, and always was a crime, wherein they have committed a 
 crime in that Ihey have enrnuraged crime. Licensing gambling will not be rais- 
 ing a revenue from crime, because if the act is properly conslructed, it will eradi- 
 cate from gambling, that which makes it a crimo. In t!ie last place is not the 
 popularity of gambling universal, and who ever beard post liominrs nalos of the 
 conviction of anv nmn of a crime committed at the same time by a whole coni- 
 Diunity. Look into the history of Louisville's bloody Monday," of the rhiladcl- 
 
96 
 
 phia riots, or the Erie mobs, and give me the name if you please, of one single 
 man who was ever convicted and executed for participating upon those turbulent 
 and sanguinary occasions. Lucan was right when he said Q^uidquid mullis pecca- 
 liir inultum est, (the guUt which is committed by many must pass unpunished.) 
 Therefore, of gambling it may be said— Stat mole sua (firm in its impregnability 
 unmoved it stands,) and in anticipating its downfall you remind one of the rustic 
 of whom Horace speaks, when he says : 
 
 J?ii>>fktus expecfat, (Jinn defluat amnis; at ille 
 Lcthitur ef hibetur in omn'e colubilis aevtim. 
 
 (The peasant [in the fable] sits waiting on the bank till the river shall have 
 passed away, but still the stream flows on, and will continue to flow forever,) and 
 the stream of gaming though all Possum Holler were to sit down upon its banks 
 to wait until it passed away, will, as long as gold is a God, avarice a passion, wealth 
 a virtue, poverty a crime, and as card-frauds are not forbidden, and the waves of 
 such frauds continue to wash up quartz by the bushel, so long will that stream 
 flow on and on in secula seculorum. 
 
 "The baflled sons must, feel the same desires. 
 And act the same 7uail follies of their sires." 
 
 0)1 a heau precher a qui n'a cure de bien faire. (It is in vain to preach 
 to those who care not to mend ) It is not with reason that you can combat the 
 fire that is in the blood. Reason is not equal to every emergency. If you under- 
 take to get to Heaven by the light of reason you will indubitably land in Hell. 
 The poet was right who said : 
 
 "Vet in tlie Tulp;ar tliis humor's bred, 
 Tliey'll sooner he witli idle customs led, 
 Or fond opinions such as they liave store. 
 Than learn of reason or of virtues lore." 
 
 Exemplo plus quam ratione vivimus, (we live more by example than reason;) and 
 moreover, defficili est longu7)i svbito deponere amorem, (it is diflicult at once to lay 
 aside a confirmed passion.) Attempt to put down gambling by prosecutions and 
 what will be the result.' You will succeed about as well as — 
 
 " he who stems a stream with sand 
 
 And fetters fiarne with tlaxen band." 
 
 You may benefit but cannot injure the gamblers. You will shorten their din- 
 ner tables only to lengthen their Faro-tables. You will increase their circum- 
 spection, and diminish their accommodations and without lessening their patrons 
 you will double their profits. You will drive them into a new regime whereby 
 they will bte enabled to shuffle off a certain class of seedy gentry, who now only 
 live dar (Zei?iaso (toUro, (to thrust their feet under olher men's tables — sponge.) To 
 the gamblers this will be a trouvaille, but it will be a hard lick on the smell-feast. 
 You will substitute cold snacks for hot and. savory viands on tiieir tables and cliassc 
 cousin for the best qualities of Otarde, Bumgardner and Madam Cliquot on their 
 side-boards. Their meetings you may cause to be conducted more ex occtdlo, but 
 none the less frequent will they occur. They will meet — a la derohce. They will 
 form their secret societies and organize mystic brotherhoods, a la sons of Malta, 
 and go largely into grips, signs and countej'-signs. They will have their cabalistic 
 •mot de Vorde and mot duguet, pass-words, watchwords and pass-keys which will ena- 
 ble them to laugh to scorn the vigilance of your police and the impotencj of your 
 laws. They will rarely assemble twice in the same place, but they will have 
 their rosets and bannerets, which will, to the initiated, point the place and "in- 
 stant the time," as distinctly as Malise ever said — 
 
 "The muster place is Lanrick mead," 
 when 
 
 "lie vanished, and o'er moor and moss, 
 
 vSped fopward with the Fiery Cross." 
 
 So now if you do want to put down gaming, rouse the bench, rouse the press, 
 rouse the politicians and rouse the people to license it, and when you succeed 
 fully in the one you will partially in the other. , 
 
 ERSKINE. 
 

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