In conclusion, it may be said that when such time arrives the conviction will also be held by the people of the United Kingdom that the professional gambler in the stock and produce markets, whose operations it is not always possible to challenge as being entirely unconnected with commerce, should at least have his huge dealings hampered by a _pro rata_ tax, the incidence of which would not interfere with _bona fide_ purchases and sales; that our police forces must be saved from becoming as corrupt as Tammany Hall through bookmakers’ bribes, to which several of them are well on the way; that the great Department of the Post Office must not continue to swell its revenues by using its organisation to assist the corrupt business of betting, even granting it special facilities, whatever may be alleged to the contrary—in particular, with regard to the telegraphic service, in which overt temptations to the servants in its employ are continually resulting in its having to prosecute them in batches, notably the younger ones among them, in the name of public morality, but practically for the protection of this bookmaking system which the Post Office, as its intermediary for deposits, assists and fosters in its work of breeding criminals and cheating fools; and finally that those individuals who, without the vestige of any mercantile basis, prey upon the credulity and vices of their fellow-countrymen should be looked upon as _hostes humani generis_, so that the bookmakers shall be treated as criminals and punished, not by fines but by imprisonment. Then, perhaps, also, the habitual private gambler of means and position will find every public career and honour withheld from him, and this great Christian nation will approach the plane of morality now occupied in this respect by our allied heathen empire of Japan. THE REPRESSION OF GAMBLING By B. SEEBOHM ROWNTREE In seeking remedies for the acknowledged national evils of betting and gambling, it will be well to consider what are the causes that have probably chiefly contributed to the present deplorable state of things. Amongst the wealthy or well-to-do there can be little doubt that (_a_) the thoughtless following of fashion, (_b_) the desire for excitement and a sense of “life,” and (_c_) the craving for gain without labour, are the main incentives to gambling practices. The same causes, though in differing degrees, and finding expression in somewhat differing forms, appear also to lie at the root of the matter amongst the artisan classes and the labouring poor. So far as concerns the following of fashion, the unwillingness to hold out against the customs of one’s comrades, and to go against the stream, human nature is the same in rich and poor, and there is no remedy for this failing but improvement of the moral stamina of the individual.