y the simple recital of a _fact_,
by Mr. Green detailing the death of a ruined gambler by the hands of a
prosperous one! _Blood_ dispelled all the illusions of logic. Argument
evaporated before the _corpse_ of the victim. Applause for ingenious
argument was hushed in a moment, when the dead body of the gambler
appeared in view! What a tribute to the power of _truth_--what a
tremendous triumph of nature, and her sacred laws, over the flimsy
artifices of passion, fiction, and a diseased imagination, fevered by
habitual vice.

Dr. Johnson says that the gambler is no better than a robber, because he
acquires property without an equivalent. The whole gist of the argument
lies here. You strip a man of fortune, or tear from his hands the
earnings of a long life, and give him in return--_nothing!_ Mr. Freeman
says, in answer to this--yes, you give him the chance of robbing you!
And he goes so far in his sophistry, as to contend that if a man
attempts to rob you on the highway, you have a right to rob him! Such is
the language of the gambler, on the rule of right, who wanting a
principle of virtue, resorts to every extravagant theory, to justify his
violations of the first law of nature.

Justice is the foundation of all human institutions: and this ordains,
that no man shall take from another, what is his own, without paying him
an equivalent. The gambler pays no equivalent--and hence, he stands on
the same platform with the robber.

The strong point in the logic of Mr. Freeman was, that _other
professions_ also acquire property without paying an equivalent, and
therefore gamblers were not criminal! We marvelled that a man of his
sagacity should venture on so gross a sophism. He alluded to speculators
and stock-jobbers, who gained their thousands without an exchange of
values, and exulted that the gambler was no worse. But could this make
the gambler an honest man, because other men were rogues? How desperate
the cause that could clutch at so frail a straw for support! Yet Mr.
Freeman appeared perfectly unconscious of the imbecility of his
reasoning. More perfect hallucination we never beheld!

Every man _feels_, when he gains property without an equivalent, that he
has done a wrong. Every dollar so acquired plants a fang in his heart.
Conscience goads him. He is miserable, restless, tortured, and for
temporary relief flies to the transient oblivion of the bowl. When he
wins, he drinks--and when he loses, he drinks to despe