of demoralization set going, just as if
the Turf were not a blight of sufficient intensity! A young man ventures
into one of those cruel rings, buys a card, and resolves to risk pounds
or shillings. If he is unfortunate, he may be saved; but, curiously
enough, it often happens that a greenhorn who does not know one
greyhound from another blunders into a series of winning bets. If he
wins, he is lost, for the fever seizes him; he does not know what odds
are against him, and he goes on from deep to deep of failure and
disaster. Well for him if he escapes entire ruin! I have drawn attention
to this new evil because I have peculiar opportunities of studying the
inner life of our society, and I find that the gambling epidemic is
spreading among the middle-classes. To my mind these coursing massacres
should be made every whit as illegal as dog-fighting or bull-baiting,
for I can assure our legislators that the temptation offered by the
chances of rapid gambling is eating like a corrosive poison into the
young generation. Surely Englishmen, even if they want to bet, need not
invent a medium for betting which combines every description of noxious
cruelty! I ask the aid of women. Let them set their faces against tin's
horrid sport, and it will soon be known no more.

If the silly bettors themselves could only understand their own
position, they might be rescued. Let it be distinctly understood that
the bookmaker cannot lose, no matter how events may go. On the other
hand, the man who makes wagers on what he is pleased to term his
"fancies" has everything against him. The chances of his choosing a
winner in the odious new sport are hardly to be mathematically stated,
and it may be mathematically proved that he must lose. Then, apart from
the money loss, what an utterly ignoble and unholy pursuit this
trapped-hare coursing is for a manly man! Surely the heart of compassion
in any one not wholly brutalized should be moved at the thought of those
cabined, cribbed, confined little creatures that yield up their innocent
lives amid the remorseless cries of a callous multitude. Poor innocents!
Is it not possible to gamble without making God's creatures undergo
torture? If a man were to turn a cat into a close yard and set dogs upon
it, he would be imprisoned, and his name would be held up to scorn. What
is the difference between cat and hare?

_March, 1887._

_LIBERTY_.

"What things are done in thy name!" The lady who spoke