“To do this, I first slightly touch upon some of the faults and corruptions the several professions and callings are generally charged with. After that I show that those very vices of every particular person, by skillful management, were made subservient to the grandeur and worldly happiness of the whole. Lastly, by setting forth what of necessity must be the consequence of general honesty, virtue, innocence, content and temperance, I demonstrate that if mankind could be cured of the failings they are naturally guilty of, they would cease to be capable of being raised into such vast, potent, and polite societies, as they have been under the several commonwealths and monarchies that have flourished since creation.” Not yet, then, have we found the human standard by which the gambler is to be denounced. Gamblers are accused of avarice, and an inordinate desire for wealth. As a rule, the gamester is not penurious. A miserly or covetous grasp of money is inconsistent with his vocation. Concede the accusation, and is he alone? Is he more greedy of gain than other men? History refutes the charge. Money is the god of the world. Get enormous wealth is the cry, no matter how; no matter how many impoverished widows and squalid orphans are crying out to heaven, day and night, against you; and such slavish adulation as the world knows not beside are yours. The passion for wealth increases gradually, as its end is achieved, the world over. Its effects are manifest wherever men strive for gold. “Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammered, rolled; Heavy to get, and light to hold; Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold; Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old To the very verge of the church-yard mould, Price of many a crime untold; Gold! gold! gold! gold!”--_Thomas Hood._ The _morale_ of gambling is not to be determined by political economy, which is not a part of moral philosophy. It is not founded on the imperations of duty, but upon the adequate footing of desirableness of self-interest. In the language of Prof. Perry: “One word circumscribes the field of morals, ought. One word defines the field of economy, expediency.” So far as it is a science, political economy is cold and selfish; “budded on monopoly values.” Judged by such a standard, gambling would be right, if expedient.