Serious investigation of the gambling process discloses the fact that pure gambling does not afford any economic basis of livelihood, save in a few cases where, as at the roulette-table or in a lottery, those who gamble know and willingly accept the chances against them. And even in the case of the roulette-table the profits to the bank come largely from the advantage which a large fund possesses in play against a smaller fund: in the fluctuations of the game the smaller fund which plays against the bank is more likely at some point in the game to be absorbed so as to disable the player from continuing his play. If a man with £1000 were to play “pitch and toss” for sovereigns with a number of men, each of whom carried £10, he must, if they played long, win all their money. So, even where skill and fraud are absent, economic force is a large factor in success. Since professional gambling in a stockbroker, a croupier, a bookmaker, or any other species, involves some use of superior knowledge, trickery, or force, which in its effect on the “chances” amounts to “loading” the dice, the non-professional gambler necessarily finds himself a loser on any long series of events. These losses are found in fact to be a fruitful cause of crime, especially among men employed in businesses where sums of money belonging to the firm are passing through their hands. It is not difficult for a man who constantly has in his possession considerable funds which he has collected for his employer to persuade himself that a temporary use of these funds, which otherwise lie idle, to help him over a brief emergency, is not an act of real dishonesty. He is commonly right in his plea that he had no direct intention to defraud his employer. He expected to be able to replace the sum before its withdrawal was discovered. But since not only legally but morally a person must be presumed to “intend” that which is a natural or reasonable result of his action, an indirect intention to defraud must be ascribed to him. He is aware that he is acting wrongly, as well as illegally, in using the firm’s money for any private purpose of his own. But in understanding and assessing the quality of guilt involved in such action, two circumstances extenuating his act, though not the gambling habit which has induced it, must be taken into account. A poor man who frequently bets must sooner or later be cleared out and unable, out of his own resources, to meet his obligations. He is induced to yield to the temptation the more readily for two reasons. First, there is a genuine probability (not so large, however, as he thinks) that he can replace the money before any “harm is done.” So long as he does replace it, no harm appears to him to have been done: the firm has lost nothing by his action. This narrower circumstance of extenuation is supported by a broader one. The whole theory of modern commercial enterprise involves using other people’s