ing no worse than many
other practices which society tolerates, and which no man loses his
reputation, or is in danger of imprisonment, for engaging in.

We have no scruple in confessing, that we were much interested in Mr.
Freeman. He appears to be one of a singular class of men, some one of
whom may be found in nearly every pursuit, however dishonourable--men of
keen and subtle minds, and of as much goodness and honesty of purpose as
is possible in the life which they have chosen, or into which perhaps
they have been in a degree forced. In the course of his remarks, he made
one allusion to his own history, which while it told as much as any
thing that was said in the course of the debate against gambling, opened
unto us, in a degree, the secret of his present position. He said that
when he was a young man, he had lost his all at the gaming table, and
that from that blow he had never recovered--"_it had broken his heart_."
And yet, strange anomaly, he now not only makes his living by gambling,
but stands up before the world as its defender.

But let us look a little further into Mr. Freeman's arguments. He did
not state them very plainly, being evidently unaccustomed to public
speaking, and, as the English say, to "thinking on his legs," but if we
are not mistaken, he reasons to his own heart as follows. Gambling in
cards is not right _abstractly_, but it is the same in principle as
gambling in stocks, in breadstuffs, in merchandise, in land, or in any
thing else. None of these are right, but they are necessary fruits of
the folly and wickedness of men, and inevitable in the present condition
of society. "I make my living, I know," he probably says, "from the
weakness and wickedness of my fellow men; but so do the physician, the
judge, the lawyer, the jailer, and the hangman." If we are not mistaken,
in this way does Mr. Freeman make out a clear case to his own
conscience; and to some small extent he is right in what he asserts. To
gamble with cards is the same principle as to gamble with stocks, or any
thing else--the difference is only one of degree; but although the
gambler and the judge both live, in a certain sense, off of the vices of
their fellow men, the difference is very evident between him whose
business conduces to increase those vices, and his whose noble office it
is to lessen them.

But Mr. Freeman complains that, while the gambler with cards is
proscribed by society, and branded with all marks of sham