Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1893. THE GAMBLING MANIA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3035, 26 July 1893, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1893. THE GAMBLING MANIA.

In a beturn from the Postal Department laid before Parliament recently it is stated that during the year ended March 31 there had been sent to Sydney from correspondents in New Zealand no loss than 14,298 registered letters bearing the address " Tattersall, Sydney." There can be no doubt at all as to what kind of messages these 14,298 registered letters carried, nor as to why it was necessary they should be registered. They were the communications of New Zealand gamblers with the conductor of a "consultation " or lottery on horse races, and the letters carried the contributions of New Zealand money that go so largely every year to swell the total of this man's handlings, and the income he makes out of the gamblers who patronise him. But 14,298 letters, each containing say £i, do not represent anything like the amount of money spent in this way; for many, very many gamblers are not content with investing one pound, but go on to five, ten, twenty pounds and fifty pounds have been known to go to Sydney under one cover to be sunk in this Maelstrom of the gambling infatuation. It is customary with many of those who have this mental disease to club together and buy whole books of tickets in the "sweep," and hope thereby to increase their chances of winning. They found this hope on the fact that as the books belong in a co-operative sort of way to the club, the prizes won by the numbers within the books of tickets are common, and equally divided among the members of the club. The money forwarded by the agents of these clubs would of course represent considerable sums, and being sent in bulk would tend still further to show that the postal return of letters did not by any means give an idea of the magnitude of the sum annually sent out of the colony for this purpose. But tho postal return, and the story that it tell?, are strong proof of the necessity that exists for legislation calculated to repress this gambling spirit—at any rate strong justification for the initiation of such legislation. This return is only another evidence of the truth of the charge that has been made a thousand times against the youth of this colony that gambling is one of their besetting sins, and that they are almost wholly given over to it and held in its disgraceful clutch. But the vice is fashionable, and legated. For, although " consultations " are banned by the Gaming and Lotteries Act in New Zeafand, the totalisator is legal and flourishes &t every race meeting, while i betting hou«e« of greater or less importance exut all over the eotony, and the bookmaker waxes fat at the expense of the knowing ones who have to pay for their want of knowledge.