Secret Band of Brothers Part 14

should think proper to partic.i.p.ate. I wish it now to be so understood. I want a committee of gentlemen to arrange this matter. But why Mr. F.

should suppose that he should have half the proceeds of the meeting, I am unable to conjecture. He seeks an opportunity to defend his business against attacks which it seems has excited no small share of alarm on his part, or those whom he represents, and yet he demands remuneration!

The fraternity must be in a rather forlorn condition at present, if they are unable to pay their attorney, in so philanthropic a cause. When we consider the source, this demand sits with ill grace upon such a champion. I have laboured now for four years, having commenced my reform without a dollar, to expose this d.a.m.nable vice. If I am not supported by the public which my labours are designed to benefit, those labours must necessarily cease.

Were Mr. F. similarly engaged, I would share with him not only the profits of my meetings, but my heart's best feelings also.

I shall be very happy if I am met, as I was led to believe, am no speaker, but somewhat skilful with cards, _and their_ use by me before an intelligent audience is my argument; I want no better for my purpose.

J. H. GREEN.

Messrs. Editors:--It appears from Mr. Green's last communication that he and I are at issue in regard to the preliminary arrangements of the debate that is to come off next week, upon the gambling question. He thinks that he ought to have all the proceeds of the meeting; and I think it should be equally divided, or else given to some charitable inst.i.tution, or else have it free. Mr. Green's argument for supposing that he should have _all_, is, that because he has been labouring four years, he ought to be rewarded: and in rather a threatening tone gives the public to understand that if they do not reward him he will quit.

"If I am not," he says, "supported by the public, which my labours are designed to benefit, those labours must necessarily cease." Now, _my_ argument for supposing that the proceeds should be equally divided is, that I claim to be the _real_ reformer; that it will be seen by those who may attend the discussion, that it is _I_ that am the true moralist--I shall go with the New Testament in one hand, and Dr. Paley's Moral Philosophy in the other, and upon that battery, and no other, will I plant my artillery. He that is _green_ enough to suppose that I am green-_horn_ enough to get up before a large audience, in the enlightened city of Philadelphia, to defend an absurdity, must be verdant indeed I go not to defend gamblers, but to defend truth, and to show that Mr. Green, like a corrupt witness, in his eagerness to procure a verdict for his party, goes beyond the facts; and that too when there is no necessity for it, for the gambler has real sins enough without heaping others upon him which he never committed. Now then, to end all this difficulty at a blow, I make to Mr. Green the proposition--That the honourable Mayor of the city, if he will do it, be the person to appoint the committee that is to conduct the debate, and to the decision of the committee, as to the funds, will I cordially submit, but not to Mr.

_Green's ipse dixit_. And here I will further suggest, that the committee be composed wholly of lawyers. This will be proper, because it is a question of law that is to be discussed; and further, it is presumed that they understand better than any other cla.s.s of men what is called parliamentary usage.

Should this proposition not be acceded to, which I _know_ is fair, my course will be to debate the question on "my own hook," and in that case take all the money and give Mr. Green not a dollar of it, but invite him to come to _my_ quarters, and defend himself, for I shall certainly be down upon him--and so let him go to his house the next night and take what may be offered at his door, and allow me to answer him in what he may have to say.

When Mr. Green, in his acceptance of my challenge, _would_ call the debate a _lecture_, I saw that old habits, that of cheating, had not yet left him. Why it looks as though he has the unblus.h.i.+ng impudence to attempt to turn a Jack from the bottom, upon me, in the very blaze of day, the very first deal; but the gentleman ought to know that he is now in contact with one who knows how little things are done. Yes, he would have it that the _debate_ was a lecture, and _Mr. Green's_ lecture, not mine, and why? Why because if it be his lecture, all the cash would, as a matter of course, be his. Also, is this not, I ask, the trick of a perfect black-leg?

J.G. FREEMAN.

First Night, from the Times.

On Monday evening, at the Lecture-room of the Chinese Museum, the debate between Mr. Green, the Reformed gambler, and Mr. J.G. Freeman of the opposite side took place, in the presence of a very large and highly respectable audience, partly composed of ladies.

Dr. Elder, at the appointed time, announced that the disputants were upon the ground, and prepared to enter into the discussion of the subject of gambling. He then introduced Mr. Freeman to the meeting.

Mr. F. said his antagonist and himself had settled the preliminaries, and in regard to the proceeds of the debates, it had been agreed that Mr. Green should receive those of the two first meetings, and that Mr.

Freeman should receive the returns of the third meeting, provided, on motion, a large majority of those present were in favour of it.

He would not attempt to disguise his real feelings from his hearers, and the gratification he experienced in having the opportunity of speaking, for once in his life, to an audience composed of men of intelligence and integrity. He well knew the difficulties under which he laboured, being unused to speaking in public, and surrounded as he was in the community by the reverend gentlemen and the press, who were avowedly opposed to him, and who had thrown their bomb-sh.e.l.ls and Congreve rockets liberally at the gambling fraternity, without mercy, but he regarded these weapons as harmless, for they had fallen at his feet without inflicting a single wound.

Mr. F. then turned to the consideration of the laws making gambling a penal offence, and particularly referred to the act of a.s.sembly pa.s.sed by the last legislature, which he denounced as unjust and impolitic. He did not appear for the purpose of defending gambling, but to speak a word in favour of those who had been represented to be the worst members of society, and against whom the voice of proscription had been raised. He contended that a man had a const.i.tutional right to do what he pleased with that which was legally his own property, and all laws pa.s.sed to abridge that right ought to receive public reprehension.

He was at a loss to understand why Mr. Green should have taken so active a part in the pa.s.sage of the law at Harrisburg. It had been said that gambling must be checked, and in order to put it down, you must make it a penitentiary offence. He regarded this as an egregious error.

Gambling, he was convinced, ought to be treated in the same manner as Intemperance--by moral suasion--and not by pa.s.sing a law that puts a man in the penitentiary for exercising a legal right. But there were fewer gamblers than drunkards, and the former had no influence at the ballot-box.

He denied the statements of Mr. Green, that young men had been enticed to gambling-houses. They invariably went there of their own accord, and he related instances in which the relatives and friends of young men were called upon by gamblers, to exercise proper authority in restraining them from visiting such places.

He alluded to the excessive penalty attached to the law, and argued that it would never be enforced, there being no inducement for the police to detect the offenders; and that from the face of the law is shown, that it was not made for the punishment of wealthy gamblers, but the poor itinerant wretches who had no local habitation. These being birds of pa.s.sage, he questioned whether they would remain long enough in one place to be caught, while the rich operator and speculator would be permitted to go on unmolested, in his gilded career of depredations upon his fellow man.

Mr. Green then arose and expressed his surprise that any individual could have the effrontery to stand up before an intelligent body of citizens, a part of that const.i.tuency, from whom the legislature of the state had derived its authority, and denounce a law which had not only been pa.s.sed with entire unanimity of the members of that body, but which had met with general favour from the people. He then referred to the act of a.s.sembly, and made some explanatory remarks upon it. He ably defended the law from the remarks of his opponent, in regard to its vagueness and insufficiency. On the whole, he regarded it as a good one. It could be effectively put in force, and was calculated to crush the evil of gambling.

He said he had no wish to conceal from the people his former habits and mode of getting a livelihood, but on the contrary, had repeatedly, in public, represented himself as being a wary gambler, and acknowledged that he had done, perhaps, as much with cards in a professional way as any man claiming the same amount of information in regard to them.

He then pa.s.sed to a review of the terrible consequences of gambling, and showed that those who became addicted to it, acquired a pa.s.sion for play, that predominated over every other feeling, and closed up the springs of affection and sympathy in the human heart.

These facts he forcibly and eloquently ill.u.s.trated by relating some painful occurrence, which came under his observation. On one occasion he was playing with a party, one of whom was losing his money very rapidly. In the height of a game, his family physician entered the room, and saying that it was with much difficulty that he found his whereabouts, informed him that his daughter had been seized with extreme illness. The gambler replied, that he would return to his home very soon.

The doctor left, but not long after returned with the gambler's wife, who implored him to come home, as the girl was dying. He desired the doctor to lead his wife from the room, with the solemn promise to follow them; which promise he seemed to have forgotten the next instant, so deeply was he interested in the play, and he remained at the gaming-table. In a little while after, the doctor returned and told him his daughter was dead. For the moment, he appeared to be greatly affected, but he still sat at the faro table of that h----l, and when he arose from it he was a ruined man.

The man has since reformed, and Mr. Green said that when he last saw him, in Baltimore, he attempted to describe the feelings which rent his breast, after he had realized the sad events of that night. His first desire was to commit suicide, but the hand of Providence stayed his arm, and by His interposition he was enabled to turn from the vice, and shun the society of those who practise it.

Mr. Green re-a.s.serted that all he had stated about plans being laid to catch the unwary, by gamblers, was strictly true. He had been cognisant of plottings of the fraternity, and in speaking of some individual who was about to be plucked, the common expression among them was, "that he was not ripe yet." The remarks of Mr Green were listened to with great attention by the audience.

Mr. Freeman followed, and after briefly replying to the points of the previous speaker, said that it was his intention, at the next meeting, to prove that all species of speculation is, properly speaking, gambling.

The Rev. John Chambers concluded. He confessed his disappointment. He expected to find a man here who would attempt to defend gambling, but he congratulated the audience that no such thing had been attempted, Mr.

Freeman having acknowledged gambling to be an evil.

The Reverend gentleman's remarks were of a general character, and in the course of their delivery he upheld the law of the state, and unsparingly denounced those for whose detection and punishment it was pa.s.sed.

First Night, from the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post.

The discussion on gambling, between Mr. Green the Reformed gambler, and Mr. Freeman, of the "Profession," which has been looked forward to with so much interest, opened upon Monday evening. The audience generally, however, were rather disappointed, inasmuch as Mr. Freeman stated that he did not come there to defend gambling, but only to prove the folly and injustice of attempting to put it down by making its practice, _by professional gamblers_, an offence punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary. But although Mr. Freeman made this avowal, he evidently did attempt in various parts of the discussion to defend gambling--not, however, as a thing good in itself, but as being no worse than many other practices which society tolerates, and which no man loses his reputation, or is in danger of imprisonment, for engaging in.

We have no scruple in confessing, that we were much interested in Mr.

Freeman. He appears to be one of a singular cla.s.s of men, some one of whom may be found in nearly every pursuit, however dishonourable--men of keen and subtle minds, and of as much goodness and honesty of purpose as is possible in the life which they have chosen, or into which perhaps they have been in a degree forced. In the course of his remarks, he made one allusion to his own history, which while it told as much as any thing that was said in the course of the debate against gambling, opened unto us, in a degree, the secret of his present position. He said that when he was a young man, he had lost his all at the gaming table, and that from that blow he had never recovered--"_it had broken his heart_."

And yet, strange anomaly, he now not only makes his living by gambling, but stands up before the world as its defender.

But let us look a little further into Mr. Freeman's arguments. He did not state them very plainly, being evidently unaccustomed to public speaking, and, as the English say, to "thinking on his legs," but if we are not mistaken, he reasons to his own heart as follows. Gambling in cards is not right _abstractly_, but it is the same in principle as gambling in stocks, in breadstuffs, in merchandise, in land, or in any thing else. None of these are right, but they are necessary fruits of the folly and wickedness of men, and inevitable in the present condition of society. "I make my living, I know," he probably says, "from the weakness and wickedness of my fellow men; but so do the physician, the judge, the lawyer, the jailer, and the hangman." If we are not mistaken, in this way does Mr. Freeman make out a clear case to his own conscience; and to some small extent he is right in what he a.s.serts. To gamble with cards is the same principle as to gamble with stocks, or any thing else--the difference is only one of degree; but although the gambler and the judge both live, in a certain sense, off of the vices of their fellow men, the difference is very evident between him whose business conduces to increase those vices, and his whose n.o.ble office it is to lessen them.

But Mr. Freeman complains that, while the gambler with cards is proscribed by society, and branded with all marks of shame, and laws pa.s.sed to imprison him if found practising his art, the gambler in stocks is neither reviled nor imprisoned. At the rank injustice, as he, in our opinion, honestly believes it, of this course on the part of society, he can hardly contain his indignation. Those "uncouth gestures," as one of our contemporaries designates them, were not in our opinion intended for effect, but were the natural language of uncontrollable indignation at what he believes to be the rank in justice of society, which he could not adequately express in words. The audience laughed, but the speaker was far from laughing--a perfect tempest of conflicting emotions, it seemed to us, was agitating his bosom. Strange as it may sound to our readers, he evidently thought that his cause was just, and wanted to make it appear so, not to the gamblers and their friends, hundreds of whom were present, and ready at any moment with their applause, but to the crowd of intelligent, virtuous men and women, in whose audience he stood. We saw the breaking out of this feeling in the half-contemptuous manner in which he alluded to the tastes of gamblers in general, as contrasted with his own--"he did not keep the company of gamblers; he had nothing to say against them, but his tastes were different."

But is it unjust to punish the gambler with cards by imprisonment and public proscription, while the gambler in stocks, &c., whose crime is the same in principle, though not in degree, goes unwhipt of justice?

Undoubtedly it is, for it is no reason that one vice should go unpunished, because another is able to escape for the present. Mr.

Freeman's argument is very good, so far as it applies to inflicting upon the gambler in stocks the same penalty as on himself; but the law of Progress, and the best interests of society, demand that these things should never be allowed to work backwards. For the way society advances, is simply this--the worst manifestations of vice are first proscribed, and then their proscription is made a stepping-stone to demolish others.

For instance--we attack gambling with cards, the worst manifestation of the gambling principle; we make it abhorrent to the moral sense of the world; we so confound it, and justly too, with robbery, that future generations shall grow up in that faith, and all the efforts of interested sophistry never be able henceforward to separate them to the popular apprehension. Having done this, in the course of some fifty or one hundred years, certain dealings in stocks, for instance, are called in question. If they can be proved to be rightly described by the phrase "GAMBLING in Stocks," the battle is half-won. For the proscription of the worst kind of gambling has given a vantage ground from which to attack the principle of gambling wherever found. And this, we say, is the only law of progress.

Another ground taken by Mr. Freeman was, that "a man has a right to do what he chooses with his own, if in so doing he does not injure anybody else." In a limited sense, this is true, doubtless--but he does injure somebody else if he fails to perform his duties to his family or to his country. For instance, he has no right to commit suicide. But gambling cannot be done without injuring somebody else, as it takes two to play at it--leaving out of view the injury done to society at large, as Mr.

Green has shown in his various works on the subject. But there is no necessity in dwelling upon this point--it cannot be defended for a moment.

As to Mr. Green's part in the discussion, it is not necessary to say much. He has our confidence and sympathy. We consider his present course a most n.o.ble one, and wish him all success in his efforts to overthrow the abominable vice from whose clutches he has come forth a reformed man.

We have taken up considerable room with this subject, because we feel great interest in both parties engaged in the discussion. Did Mr.

Freeman appear to be only a bold, bad man, we should hardly have wasted a single paragraph upon him or his arguments. But he is evidently a man of considerable information and talent, and to all appearance, strange as it may sound, of much sincerity and cross-grained honesty. That he may be led to forsake his present pursuits, before his gray hairs shall have gone down to a dishonoured grave, is our fervent wish and prayer.

From Scott's Weekly.

The interesting question between Mr. J. H. Green, the Reformed Gambler, and Mr. J.G. Freeman, as to the rights of gambling, was discussed in the Lecture-room of the Museum Building, on Monday evening last. A large audience attended, and notwithstanding the zeal of Mr. Freeman more than once carried him a little beyond the limits of propriety, the whole pa.s.sed off pleasantly.

The announcement in the papers was not adhered to, which created some dissatisfaction; but then the speeches of Mr. Freeman were of themselves well worth the price of admission. He did not defend gambling--he could not, he said, pretend to defend it--he only meant to deny the sweeping aspersions of its foes. He spoke at great length, and sometimes his logic was quite ingenious.

Mr. Green confined himself to a few facts, leaving the more minute part of the discussion for a subsequent evening.

The Rev. John Chambers closed the proceedings by a few timely remarks, in which he reviewed what he considered lawful and unlawful pursuits--among these latter, he hoped to see the time that every vender of intoxicating liquors would be placed in the same catalogue that gamblers are by the recent law--imprisonment. He then referred to the decorum of the audience, and expressed a hope that all the future discussions would be listened to in the same spirit--that all the truth possible may be elicited in reference to that terrible vice--gambling.