Yes, but is not gambling a destructive luxury? Is it not a wasteful expenditure of money? I answer, what is luxury, and is it always an evil? Roscher well says: “The idea conveyed by the word is an essentially relative one.” Every individual calls all expenditure with which he chooses to dispense, a luxury. The same is true of every age and nation. “’Tis a word without any specific idea,” wrote Voltaire, “much such another expression as when we say Eastern and Western hemispheres: in fact, there is no such thing as East and West; there is no fixed point where the earth rises and sets; or, if you will, every point on it is, at the same time, East and West. It is the same with regard to luxury; for either there is no such thing, or else it is in all places alike.... Do we understand by luxury the expense of an opulent person? Must he, then, live like the poor, he whose profusion, alone, is sufficient to maintain the poor? Expensiveness should be the thermometer of a private person’s fortune, as general luxury is the infallible mark of a powerful and flourishing empire.... Money is made for circulation. He who hoards it is a bad citizen, and even a bad economist. It is by dissipating it we render ourselves useful to our country and ourselves.” David Hume also thought the word of uncertain signification. He said: “The bound between virtue and vice cannot here be exactly fixed, more than in other moral subjects. To imagine that the gratification of any sense, or the indulging of any delicacy, is of itself a vice, can never enter into a head that is not disordered by the frenzies of enthusiasm. These indulgences are only vices, when they are pursued at the expense of some virtue, as liberality of charity; in like manner as they are follies, when a man ruins his fortune and reduces himself to want and beggary.” Again, William Roscher, the political economist, was of opinion that “prodigality is less odious than avarice; less irreconcilable with certain virtues;” and that “prodigality, directly or indirectly, increases the demand for commodities.” We know the Epicureans and Stoics were reproached with being bad citizens, because their moderation was a hindrance to trade. Gambling is no more a luxury than many other practices of mankind. Some persons may prefer it as a pastime to any other form of luxury. Who is to decide a question of taste and expense but the individual concerned? One man indulges lavishly in pictures, books, and clothes; another is prodigal in the matter of tobacco and liquors; a third delights in the excitement of chance. All these inclinations are luxurious. Which is preferable to each, is not for society to determine in one case, more than in the others. In a word, the phases of luxury are so variable and extensive that it is equally unjust and impracticable for the state to discriminate unfavorably.