y has increased
in value by one-eighth? My good counsellor, Mr. Ruskin, who is the most
virulent enemy of usury, is nevertheless very glad that his father
bought Bank of England shares, which have now been converted into Stock,
and stand at over 300; Ruskin senior was a shrewd speculator, who backed
his fancy; and a bookmaker does the same in a safer way. Bookmaking is a
business which is carried out in its higher branches with perfect
sobriety, discretion, mid probity; the gambling element does not come
in on the bookmaker's side, but he deals with gamblers in a fair way.
They know that he will lay them the shortest odds he can; they know that
they put their wits against his, and they also know that he will pay
them with punctilious accuracy if they happen to beat him in the
encounter of brains. Three or four of the leading betting men "turn
over" on the average about half a million each per annum; one firm who
bet on commission receive an average of five thousand pounds per day to
invest, and the vouchers of all these speculators and agents are as good
as bank notes. Mark that I grant the certainty of the bookmakers
winning; they can remain idle in their mansions for months in the year,
and the great gambling public supply the means; but I do not find fault
with the bookmakers because they use their opportunities, or else I
might rave about the iniquity of a godly man who earns in a week 100,000
from a "corner" in tin, or I might reprobate the quack who makes no less
than 7000 per cent on every box of pills that he sells. A good man once
chatted with me for a whole evening, and all his talk ran on his own
luck in "spotting" shares that were likely to move upward. Certainly his
luck as a gambler had been phenomenal. I turned the conversation to the
Turf case of Wood _v_. Cox, and the torrent of eloquence which met me
was enough to drown my intellect in its whirl and rush. My friend was
great on the iniquity of gaming and racing, and I rather fancy that he
proposed to play on the Betting Ring with a mitrailleuse if ever he had
the power. I know he was most sanguinary--and I smiled. He never for an
instant seemed to think that he was exactly like a backer of horses,
and I have no doubt but that his density is shared by a few odd millions
here and there. The stockbroker is a kind of bookmaker, and the men and
women who patronise both and make their wealth are fools who all may be
lumped under the same heading. I knew of one