“But this discrimination is an utterly absurd, illogical and tyrannical one. What right has any body of men to say, ‘The vices of other men we will punish, but our own vices nobody shall punish? We will restrain other men from seeking their own happiness, according to their own notions of it; but nobody shall restrain us from seeking our own happiness, according to our notion of it. We will restrain other men from acquiring any experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary to their own happiness; but nobody shall restrain us from acquiring an experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary to our own happiness.’ Nobody but knaves and blockheads ever think of any such absurd assumptions as these. And yet, evidently, it is only upon such assumptions that anybody can claim the right to punish the vices of others, and at the same time claim exemption from punishment for his own. The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are carried on by governments to plunder, destroy and enslave mankind.” It has been asserted that gambling is a vice. I deny that such is the case. The proposition cannot be established, as an absolute principle. If a man chooses to risk his money, on a game of cards, he has a perfect right to do so, in the abstract, and no man, or any body of men, has a right to forbid him. “It is his money, and he has a right to do what he chooses with it. He has a legal right to put it in a gun and shoot it away, or burn it up, or risk it on a game of chance, or make any other disposition of it, and no man, or body of men, has a right to interfere.” For my purpose, as a question of law, the real question is whether a man may dispose of his own as he chooses? If so, then he has a right to wager it on a game of cards, or at dice; and it is absurd to treat as criminal another man who may join in with him in gaming, as an antagonist. In other words, “If John has at any time or in any place, the right to wager his money on a game of chance, then it is absurd to treat as criminal the helping John to do what he has a right to do. If one participant in a transaction is guilty of crime, so is the other. But if one participant is guiltless, then the other is guiltless.”