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VICE  OF   GAMBLING,
DELIVERED, BY APPOINTMENT,
lt> THfc
EntM&amfclitifl Soctrtg of arrausjMauta SSuftoersttg,
NOVEMBER 2ND & 3RD, 1835,
BY CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D. 
?'«F, 
A  DISCOURSE

«*»

VICE  OF   GAMBLING,
Delivered, by appointment, to the Anti-Gambling Society of Tran-
       sylvania University, November 2nd and 3rd, 1835,
BY  CHARLES  CALDWELL, M.  D.
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY.

       LEXINGTON, KY:   *
J. CLARKE * CO., PRINTERS—UPPER-STREET.

               1835. 
 
DISCOURSE.
Gentlemen :
            An object of no ordinary  import  has  called us
together.  We are bound therefore to regard  it with a cor-
responding degree of  attention and  interest.   It  concerns
not merely the correctness and purity of our own lives, our
safety  from impending and  manifold mischief, and the dis-
charge of a duty  to a few  of our contemporaries.  No; its
scope is much wider, and its end more momentous.   Extend-
ing in its influence far beyond ourselves, and those with whom
we are immediately connected, it involves the moral standing
and general  character of  the community we live in, and
bears prospectively on  the interests of posterity.  Ages  hence,
when we shall be forgotten, our descendants  may feel it in
their characters and fortunes. Nor is it limited in  its  action
to sublunary concerns.   The stamp and bias which the mind
may receive from it, in its present state of existence, can hard-
ly fail to pass with it into another, and cling to it interminably.
   This is the first anniversary of a solemn compact, in which
we pledged to each other and to the world  our honour and
good faith, not only to refrain ourselves from a certain speci-
fied and pernicious practice,  but to do all in our power to dis-
countenance and suppress it.   The latter element of this obli-
gation devolved on us  the duty of endeavouring to dissuade
others from indulging in the deprecated evil, and to affix on it
the odium and reprobation  it deserves.  In  its influence on
each of us,  therefore,  the occasion is calculated to  be  deeply
impressive.
   Twelve months have elapsed, since, as officers and sons of
Transylvania University, we associated ourselves, in this Hall,
against the vice of Gambling; and we have met again to com-
memorate the event.   In  speaking of that  event and its con- 
4
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING*
 sequences, I beg to be considered as having  no reference to
 the humble part I performed in it personally.  My remarks
 will be commemorative of the performances of others.  As far
 as my fellow members were" concerned in the transaction, they
 have discharged their duty nobly, and are not only entitled to
 the thanks of their fellow citizens, but are also privileged to
 look back to their  patriotic association, with feelings of mutual
 gratulation and triumph.   It was the first blow of the kind that
 had been struck in the West, and the first but one in the Uni-
 ted States, against the fraudulent and nefarious practice, that
 constituted its object.   Nor can it fail,  wherever  it may be
 made known, to redound to the honour of the individuals who
 aimed it, and to the credit of the institution, under whose au-
 spices it occurred.  Such will be the reward of the society I
 address, as long as  crime shall be viewed with abhorrence, and
 promptitude of action* in the suppression and prevention of it,
 receive the approbation of the virtuous and the enlightened.
  That the  movements in Transylvania against the vice of
 gambling have  been highly beneficial, it would be skepticism
 to doubt, and injustice to deny.   They  saved from the insidi-
 ous machinations of the blackleg many  of your fellow pupils,
 who might have otherwise fallen victims to them, and gave a
 salutary warning to the unsuspecting to beware.   As far as
 could be ascertained,  not a card nor a die was thrown, nor a
 game of hazard of any kind indulged in, during the session of
 last winter,  by  a single pupil belonging to this school.   That
 was indeed  "a consummation devoutly  to be  wished,"  and
was fairly attributable to the formation of the society.   The
 mutual  pledge of the members not to gamble  was honorably
 redeemed by them; and the few pupils who did not formally
renounce the evil, notwithstanding, refrained from it.  Nor do
 I permit myself to doubt, that the present class, individually and
 as a body, will follow an example so highly meritorious.  More
honorable still;  I trust they will set an example to be followed
by their successors.
  Nor did the  Society benefit alone the members of the Uni-
 versity.  Its influence on the inhabitants of Lexington  was 
A DISCOURSE OX GAMBLING.
&
 striking.  A long standing and pernicious custom pursued by
 many of them, was  thrown into disrepute and nearly extin-
 guished by it—at least for the season.  My allusion is to family
 gambling, the fell and fatal root of the entire evil.  As far as
 information was received, but one attempt was made last win-
 ter, in any family of note,  to desecrate the fire-side,  by that
 once fashionable  scene of corruption and mischief,  a  "social
 whist party."  And,  to  the joy of all who were friendly to
 Lexington, its institutions, and its youth, that proved a failure.
 None but a few of the most stanch and veteran members of the
 "Club" repaired to the rendevous of unhallowed  cupidity, and
 cozenage in disguise.  Nor did even they proceed in the for-
 bidden enjoyment.  For once their hardihood forsook them, and
 the cards lay neglected.  Mortified and dispirited at their re-
 duced numbers, and disappointed hopes of play and plunder,,
 they dispersed at an early hour, to mourn, as may be supposed,
 in solitude and silence, over the degeneracy and defection of their
 craven associates, and the perishable nature of sublunary bliss!
 Such was one of the earliest  trophies of our infant association*
 Though the serpent that had long shed its poison through  the
 community was not strangled in  its grasp, it was maimed and
 discomfited.
   In further  commendation  of our society and its operation,
 it was not limitted in its salutary influence to Lexington alone.
 It made a lively impression on most of the neighbouring towns
 and cities, and was felt throughout  a large portion of the Mis-
 sissippi Valley.   To myself  individually, as well,  I doubt not,
 as to many others, numerous applications were made for copies.
 of  our Constitution,  of an address  that was delivered on the
 occasion, and of reports of our proceedings, accompanied by
 flattering messages, expressions  of  thanks,  and confident  as-
 surances that our example would be followed.  And I rejoice
 to inform you that those assurances are beginning to  be rea-
 lized  by the formation of anti-gambling societies in every  di-
 rection.  At length is the axe about to be  applied to the for-
 bidden tree; and  the  moral  upas,  that has been long taking
root in our country, and poisoning every breeze with its dead- 
6
A discourse  ©;.•  gambling.
ly emanations, will fall with a crash, destructive to those, by
whom it was planted.  May appearances be trusted, the time
is approaching, when professional gamblers  will be no longer
suffered to go at large in  society; and  when family gambling
will be also suppressed, or when  those who  may persist in it
will be thrown into an odious fraternity by themselves, shun-
ed by- the virtuous and honorable, pointed at by the  scornful,
and pitied by the compassionate on account of their fallen for-
tunes, and degraded condition.   And, at whatever period this
desirable consummation may occur, the Anti-Gambling Society
of Transylvania will have been highly efficient and distinguish-
ed in its production.  It will be  remembered and hailed  as a
patriotic corps, that aroused the people by its early summons,
animated them by its spirit, and led them to the onset.
  Such is a  hasty and brief recital of what  we have already
done, and such the brightening prospect before us.  Our morn-
ing dawn has been benignant and propitious, and,  if we con-
tinue true to ourselves, and  persevere with  steadiness  in the
work we have commenced, we have the promise of a day of
usefulness and glory.  Recent occurrences,  as well  in other
places, as in our  own city, indicate  the present time  as a
crisis peculiarly favourable for action. The tide  is up, and,
if taken at the  flood,  will bear us  on  its bosom  to the
haven of our wishes.  But,  if neglected, and allowed to pass
away, its ebb may be final; and even  the star of hope, that
has cheered us in our efforts, obscured by  our delinquency,
may desert  us forever.  Never perhaps before has- there  been
a conjucture so auspicious to the enterprise we are engaged in.
Public sentiment and a newly awakened sense of public danger
are vigorously in our favour; and these, when brought into ac-
tive co-operation, are irresistible.  To give them full effect,
under  existing circumstances, is as  easy as to will it.   Even
now  are  thousands of our  fellow citizens  prepared for the
summons invoking them to the conflict.  And "Destruction to
Gambling,  and Confusion to its Advocates," is a motto they
would willingly inscribe on their banners.
   Nor, as has been just intimated, is it in this region alone that 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAM3LING.
7
all things are in readiness.  Throughout the land, if signs are
not deceptive, a similar state of preparation exists.   Every
where is the harvest ripe  for the sickle, and promises to la-
bourers an  abundant reward.   And  where  is the man  of  a
sound conscience, and possessed of feelings that deserve to be
called religious, so deaf to  duty, and so regardless  of his  own
and the public welfare, as to  shrink from service, and  remain
inactive, on an occasion at once so cheering and  imperative!
I reply unhesitatingly, that such a man does not exist; and that
he who, making a profession  of morality and religion,-refrains
from action,  at such a conjuncture, professes merely, and  is
practically a  hypocrite—or a moral coward—a time server  of
some kind.  Am I told that this language is unceremonious and
harsh? Be it so. It is notwithstanding true; and as to ceremony,
soothing tones, and silken expressions in a case like the pres-
ent, I give them to the wind.   When the gangrene is deep and
the disease  desperate,  lenitives  are fatal.  The knife and the
caustic must be employed—or the patient dies.  If no  such
individual as  I have designated exist, I have  given no cause of
offence; and if there be  any  such,  whether his  condition is
high or low,  and whether he is a clergyman or a layman,  he
has much more reason to  be offended with himself than  with
 me,  and deserves a severer rebuke than I have given him.-—
 And such rebuke is in store  for him, from his conscience or his
 God^  His inaction is . criminal, because it tolerates crime,
 which he might aid in  suppressing.
    But, in every undertaking, measures and  means are no less
 necessary, than a readiness  to employ them.  To insure suc-
 cess in  our present enterprise, not only must we have the res-
 olution to act; competent schemes of action must be  devised,
 and all  things requisite to their accomplishment provided.  A
 few remarks on these  topics, therefore, will not,  I flatter my-
 be considered out of  place.   The more  effectually, however,
 to nerve us for the contest,  and confirm our resolution  not to
 abandon it, let us contemplate, for a moment, the character of
 the evil we are anxious to exterminate.
    As already mentioned, we have  put  ourselves in array a-> 
8
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
 gainst the vice of Gambling; and that is a term of hideous im-
 port.  A  picture of the flagitious scenes of a gaming  house
 would be the best exposition of it—the only one indeed that
 could  competently .portray it.   But to furnish that,  in  the
 strength of feature and-character that  belongs to it, is a task
 too arduous for me to attempt.   What my eyes have  beheld
 in those abstracts of' abomination, my  language is wanting in
 power to express.   It would be hardly extravagant to say,
 that Dante and Milton might have culled materials from them,
 to heighten the intensity of their burning delineations of the
 Regions of Wo.  The term Gambling implies an incorporation
 of all that is corrupt  and nefarious in  principle, seductive m
 example, and ruinous in effect.  It makes irrevocable havoc of
 family, fame, fortune, morality,  social endearment, private
 worth, and public usefulness, and of every thing else that ren-
 ders youth lovely,  age venerable, or life desirable—of every
 thing that does honour to the living, or embalms  and hallows
 the memory  of the  dead.   If there  be a human bliss  which
 gambling does not embitter, or an earthly good which it does
 not deteriorate, I am a stranger to both.  And if there be a
 single vice or mark of turpitude, ruinous to man and hateful to
 Heaven, which does not follow in its train, its name would be
 new to me.
   On a former occasion, not dissimilar to the  present, I pro-
 nounced gambling identical in principle, and therefore in classy.
 with robbery, and theft, pocket-picking and piracy, and what-
 ever other form of crime a want of conscience, and a lawless
 cupidity of gain can engender.  I further declared  it to be a
 relic of barbarism, resorted to by the ignorant, uncultivated^
 and tasteless,  to fill up  the  mental vacuity, and remove the;
 tedium which idleness produces.   And I now not only repeat
and affirm the opinion then advanced, but confidently add, that
the same individuals, who, by one  train of circumsta&eesy are'
converted into gamblers, may, by other trains adapted to the
several  modifications of  vice, be transformed to robbers and
thieves, pick-pockets and pirates.  The  characters  and their*
crimes are congenial, and readily transmutafcle into each other. 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
9
 la confirmation of this, nothing is more common,  than for a
 daring gamester, who has been beggared in one of the "Hells"
 of London, to appear soon afterward a successful highwayman
 on Shooter's Hill, or Hounslow-Heath. And, in Paris, the same
 desperado is one night a gambler in the Palais Royale, the n3xt
 a pick-pocket in the  Rue St.  Denis, and the third a footpad
 in the Champs d'Elysees.  And whole crews of  pirates,  and
 bands of conspirators have been composed of the wreck and
 refuse of gaming-houses.    We are told distinctly by the  Ro-
 man historian, that Catiline and his chief confederates were, a
 corps of beggared and desperate gamblers.  Nor do I hesitate
 to subjoin, that when the professional gamblers of the United
 States shall be driven from their trade, as they certainly must
 be, they will resort to some form ofpositive and technical felony i
 As to gentlemen gamblers, many of them will probably content
 themselves with swindling, or some other sort of sinister em-
 ployment, less dangerous  than theft or robbery—though equal-
 ly disreputable  and immoral.   Industry and sober honesty
 will be too insipid for them.  They will be like distilled water
 to the habitual sot, whose palate is callous to every thing mild-
 er than concentrated alcohol; or like pulverized starch  to the
 veteran snuff-taker, whose nostrils  have been regaled* with
 "Irish black-guard.''''  But, be the change what it may, society
 will be benefited by it.   A gentleman gambler is worse than
 a swindler, because he  is more seductive and treacherous in
 his malefactions; and a black-leg is the most nefarious and dan-
 gerous of felons.   Independently of his own fraudulent and
 flagitious transactions, a gambler, whether gentlemanly or pro-
fessional, makes more thieves and  pilferers, than perhaps  all
 other offenders  united.   This he does by  seducing clerks  to
 pilfer from their employers, servants and apprentices from their
 masters, husbands  from their wives, sons from their parents,
 brothers from their sisters, friends from friends, and strangers
 from strangers, to make an offering of the unhallowed gain at
 his polluted shrine.    This he does in instances numerous  be-
 yond calculation.   A deplorable example of the kind occurred
 very recently in this city.   A young man of a character once
              2 
10
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
irreproachable, and of highly respectable family connections,
was despoiled at the card table of all he  possessed.   Unable
to leave the place, in  this state of destitution, he robbed a fel-
low lodger, was detected,  imprisoned,  and ruined for life'.
When on his way to  the dungeon, he confessed to the officer
who conducted him, and afterwards in open court, that gamb-
ling had been  the cause of his misfortunes and crimes.   And
thousands of others have made similar confessions, when about
to  be executed for capital offences.   Gambling taught them
first to steal, then to rob, and next to murder, which  brought
them  to the gibbet.
   The addition made by the black-leg to the hosts of the in-
temperate is also abundant.   Though he rarely drinks to in-
toxication himself, he sits in grim sobriety  and makes others
drink, that they may  surrender themselves  the more certainly
and helplessly to his toils.   The vice of intemperance in drink
is almost the only one from which he is exempt.  And, as just
represented,  he abstains from that from  vicious motives, and
for atrocious purposes—that he may succeed the better in his
schemes of felony.   Such is the unqualified turpitude  of his
character, that it  is scarcely possible for him to  do a praise-
worthy action from a praiseworthy motive.   To moral and
virtuous purposes he  is a stranger,  be  his occasional perform-
ances what they may.   Is he, at times, apparently generous
and charitable in  his feelings, and munificent in his contribu-
tions?   He is in quest of popularity and favour, that he may
perpetrate his iniquities the more  successfully and on a broader
 scale; and  that, in case of detection, arrest, and trial,he may
 find adherents to procure his acquittal,  or aid in his escape—
 or perchance to obtain a pardon for him from some State Ex-
 extive!  And, by such means, he frequently gains a dangerous
 influence.—I have said that  gaming promotes intemperance.
 In proof of this, every gambling-house has its appendix of grog-
 shops.  And those profligate sinks  of intemperance and riot,
 are hotbeds also  of games of hazard.    Gaming and drinking
 therefore  are mutual auxiliaries, in the  corruption of morals, 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
11
and the production of crime.   But the former is unspeakably
the most atrocious.
  That assassination, and all forms of individual violence and
dissoluteness enter  into  the  aggregate  of evils  that cluster
around the vice of gambling, has been long known to us.  But
a new and  more inhuman element has recently  appeared in
the fell incorporation.  I allude to the  conspiracy between
black-legs and horse-thieves, robbers and rebellious slaves,  to
spread conflagration  and havock  through the  south.  Were
their other  offences less  deep and damnatory  than they are,
that attempt alone furnishes ample ground to the governments
of the slave-holding states to act toward  them  with unprece-
dented vigilance  and severity.   It proclaims in a tone of au-
thority not to be questioned, much less resisted,  that no pro-
fessional gambler should  be suffered to reside in those States,
in the enjoyment of his freedom.   He  should  be banished in
conformity to a law  enacted for the purpose, or committed to
the penitentiary  and hard labour  for life.   Nothing short of
this will exterminate the race;  and to permit  their existence
and freedom, is to invite ruin.  Their reformation is hopeless—
at least while they are surrounded by temptations and chances
of forbidden gain.  Nor should legislative measures be confined
to them alone.  They should extend to all persons who practise
any game or sport of hazard, where money or property is stak-
ed, that the fraudulent custom may be entirely suppressed. To
win and extort money, by one sort of betting,  is as immoral
as by another.   For a two-fold reason the slave-holding states
are peculiarly interested in these precautions.  To  their  inju-
ry and disgrace, they are the principal hotbeds of gamblers;
and, from  the  character of their population, such  felons and
vagabonds are  dangerous to their peace, as the  event referred
to has  satisfactorily shown.
   It is not unknown to me that certain  eastern writers, and
other noisy meddlers, at  a distance, have censured the prompt
and stern proceedings of our brethren of the south,  in relation
to gamesters, murderers, and their associates.  Captious and
obtrusive railers, what have they  to do with a  matter that in 
12
A DISCDURSE  ON GAMBLING.
 no way concerns them! What do they know about the ground
 of the  immediate determination and  decisive action of the
 people  they condemn! and what of their irresistible  necessity
 to act,  and  of the  ruin that vascillation or delay might  have
 produced!   The State of  Mississippi was threatened  with  an
 insurrection  and a  servile war (always the most  sanguinary
 and unsparing of  wars), and  black-legs  and horse-thieves,
 steam-doctors, and itinerant preachers, were to lead the slaves
 to pillage and massacre.   By a gang of desperadoes the mur-
 der of a brave and distinguished  citizen was already perpetrat-
 ed—the first act  in the tragedy whose  catastrophe  was  to
 consist  in the desolation of  the  country!  A commencement
 so appalling called imperatively for  vigorous re-action.   At a
 crisis so awful, when the  volcano of the passions  was ready
 to open, what was to be  done?   The  blood of thousands  of
 the orderly and virtuous—women and children, innocence and
 beauty  included in the reckoning—and the agony and despair
 attending such disasters,  were  weighed, on one side, against
 the blood of a few felons and conspirators on the other, whose
lives had been nothing but a register of crimes, and were per-
 haps  already forfeited to  violated justice.  Infinite disparity I
At such a conjuncture a blow must be struck, as well to intim-
 idate and quell the foe, as  to reduce his numbers.   Decision
and promptitude were essential to safety.  To  pause  was to
perish.  When the assassin's knife is already bared, and at the
throat of his victim, who that is sane and has manhood in  him,
will await the delay of a judicial process, before he strikes the
murderer dead? He that weakly demurs, under circumstances
so pressing, insures, if he  does not  invite, the  immolation of
the innocent, and is accessary to the deed!—at least in  con-
science, if not in law.   So thought the patriotic and high-
spirited  Missippians, and their measures  corresponded to the
peril that surrounded them.  To prevent a promiscuous and
wide-spread scene of burning and butchery, they  devoted to
the cord, without all  the  technical  formalities of law, a few
notoriously  guilty culprits, who  were a curse to society, and 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING..
IS
a scandal to their race.   By such  proceeding  the  surviving
murderers were terrified and banished and the  conspiracy de-
feated, and peace and security restored to the community.
  Such were the  motives and such the consequences of the
measures adopted; and they were the dictates of humanity, as
well as conformable to the laws of necessity, and  the spirit of
self-defence.   Yet their authors, I  say, are denounced  by a
few shallow and censorious  news-mongers, who are ignorant
of their subject; and who, reposing in calm security at home,
are reckless of the perils of their fellow-citizens at a distance;
but who, had  they been on  the  spot, when the tempest was
ready  to break, their wives  and children trembling and weep-
ing and  clinging around  them, and imploring  protection and
safety  at their hands, would have not only concurred but co-op-
erated with their countrymen in the stern work of prevention
adopted—or, in the estimation of the manly, would have for-
feited the names of husband and father!   The horrors of St.
Domingo are to be renewed in our country, until the waters
of the  Mississippi, already reddened and reeking  with blood,
shall reflect the glare of the midnight conflagration;  yet the
destined victims are not to protect themselves,  and avert the
catastrophe, except through the windings of courts of law?—
And on what ground?—from motives, I reply, of a sickly and
spurious clemency towards black-legs and their associates [
In all this prosing and canting about law and the rights of trial
by jury, there is, in the present  case,  as little of humane
feeling, as of sound judgment.  The mere  show of justice to
the few and the profligate, in the form  of law,  might  have
proved real and  criminal injustice to the many and  the vir-
tuous.   It might have  surrendered  them to the dagger of the
assassin, and the torch of the incendiary—and the impression was,
that such would be the issue.  Reason and experience concur in-
testifying, that desperate and rapid  complaints  call for prompt
and powerful remedies.  Under circumstances of great urgen-
cy, temporizing measures are sure to injure, if not to destroy.
Such was the malady engendered by conspirators, in the vitals
Of Mississippi, and the means applied were alone competent 
14
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
to its complete eradication.   I shall only add, that what  has
been attempted in one slave-holding State  may be  attempted
in others.   Hence,  I  repeat, the wisdom  and necessity of
guarding against the danger, by  vigilant  precautions, rigid
measures, and prompt execution.
  Shall I be told that there is danger in such precautionary mea-
sures themselves, because they may be prostituted, by abuse,
to evil purposes?  I know it; and  so has been,  and  so may
again every earthly good be more  or less prostituted  to some
sort  of mischief.  The food and drink that  sustain our bodies,
in common with knowledge and religion which minister to  the
mind, are subject to daily prostitution and abuse.  So, as fear-
ful experience assures us, are the immunities of freedom. What
then?  Must we neither eat,  nor drink, worship, inquire, nor
assert our liberties, lest, by some  slight of hand of the artful
and the malicious, those practices  should be perverted from their
true  ends, and rendered detrimental to us?   And when danger
threatens us, must  we fold our arms, and remain inactive, or
strike only by line and rule, and in  abject obedience to techni-
cal authority, lest a blow aimed at an adversary should fall on
a friend,  or  recoil on ourselves?  Away with such cautious,
time-serving nonsense!   It is  the counsel of cowardice, igno-
rance and indecision, not  of wisdom, firmness, and experience.
It reminds me of the  scruples of  a certain general  officer,
noted for a slow step, when advancing on an enemy, and a quick
one,  when retreating, who was unwilling to have "great guns"
abouthim,lest the foe might take them, and turn them against him-
self!   On occasions of sudden and  perilous  emergencies, bold
and even doubtful measures must be sometimes adopted.  The
conjuncture justifies and renders indispensable, what would be
wrong and forbidden, under ordinary  circumstances.   And, in
such cases,  where  a prompt and  intrepid policy  has failed
once, a  tardy and timid  one  has failed ten  thousand times.
Those who resolve on the sword must be met with the sword;
and if is,  in most instances, the dictate of sound policy, to an-
ticipate, their blow.  When the tiger is crouching for his spring,
there is  no time to deliberate.  The  instinct to  destroy must 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
15
be implicitly obeyed, or the disobedient dies.   Such is the law
of nature, which is a fair transcript of the law of Heaven, by
the author himself.   In all case's, however, where the laws of
the land are fully competent to the suppression of crime,  the
prevention of mischief, and the punishment of the  guilty, let
them be exlusively  relied on.   It  is only   on  emergencies
not sufficiently provided for, that a resort should be had to the
laws of necessity.   Such report by communities  is clearly
sanctioned by the laws that justify individuals  in destroying in
self-defence an enemy resolved and prepared to take their own
lives, or the  lives  of  their  friends.   And on the necessity
of defensive measures, as well as  on their form  and  char-
acter, those  most  immediately concerned must decide.   I
know we are  told that when  the laws are insufficient  to meet
the conjuncture, time should be allowed to remove their insuf-
ficiency.   But I also know that such a course may prove fatal.
All experience shows that human foresight and wisdom cannot
legislate for every dangerous crisis that may occur. Something
must be left to discretion and judgment.  And  I repeat, that
those  on  the spot,  acquainted with facts, and involved in
the issue, are best prepared to judge correctly. (A. See Appen-
dix.)
   Having thus, without reserve, expressed my sentiments of
professional gamblers  and  the vices they practise,  and  my
views respecting the suppression of the one, and the expulsion
of the other,  I may now ask;
   By what means  are these important ends to be attained?
   In replying to this question, my remarks shall have reference
 chiefly to Kentucky; more especially to our own city; though
 it is probable  they may apply also to other places.  I have pro-
 nounced  the  ends aimed at "important;"  and, from what has
 been already  said, I feel justified in adding, that they are trans-
 cendently so.  Never before has the city of  Lexington been
 engaged in a  cause so vital to her interests, as well as to her
 honour.  She has often deliberated  on matters of peace,  and
 matters of war; on elections of officers for herself, for counties,
 the State, and the United States; and on turnpikes, rail-roads, 
16
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
banks, and institutions of learning.  But what, to her, is either
of these, or all of them united, compared to the topic I am now
discussing?  On the expulsion of gamblers, and the suppression
of gambling, depend our moral, literary, and scientific  exis-
tence, and our entire character for respectability, as a commu-
nity.  Unless we drive  from among us these moral lazars, and
cleanse ourselves of the pollution with which they infect us, the
name of Lexington will become a term of abhorrence, and a
synonyme of profligacy.   Our schools of learning will  be de-
serted; the very buildings  they  occupy may be turned into
gaming houses; and our youths will become rogues, black-legs,
and vagabonds, or, what is but  little better—gentlemen gam-
blers.   How, then, I  ask again, are these evils to be removed?
  The way, I reply,  is plain and easy, if we unite in an effort
to that effect, and vigorously pursue it.  As a community, we
have but to will a reform, and the work is done.  Public senti-
ment, fairly  expressed  and directed, and carried  into practice
with judgment and energy, will expel black-legs,  and expunge
gambling, in a single  month, and reclaim us to comparative pu-
rity and virtue.  Witness the reform produced by the inhabi-
tants  of Vicksburg, Natchez, and other places to the  south,
with an ease and a rapidity that astonished even themselves.
And the people of Lexington can do the same, with equal fa-
cility  and promptitude, provided they act with the resolution
that becomes them.   Nor need  they  violate, in the transac-
tion, a single law of earth or Heaven, but aid, as good men are
bound to do, in the fulfilment of both.  In the cleansing pro-
cess, however,  suitable means must be employed.
  As far as I have been able to inform myself, the laws of Ken-
tucky, for the suppression of gambling, are among the best, if
not themselves  the best, that have been passed by any State
in the Union.   The strict enforcement of them is amply com-
petent to the extinction of the evil.    Let them be thus  en-
forced, then, and the object is achieved.  The black-leg is pros-
trated, his machinations  are  no longer fatal to the inexperi-
enced; and, as relates also to gentlemen gamblers, "Othello's
occupation" will be at  an end J  For the latter fraternity are 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
17
as flagrant violators of law, as deeply under its ban, and as li*
able to the penalty and disgrace it affixes, as the former.
   In the execution of the laws against gambling, five classes
of persons are especially concerned; informers and witnesses,
who are usually the same; jurors,  gentlemen of the Bar, gen*
of the Bench, and subordinate officers of justice, consisting of
constables,  marshals, and sheriffs.  Vigilance, capacity, and
faithfulness, in these are sufficient for the entire extinguish-
ment of the vice, and the punishment  of the offenders.   And
by the public will, directed by intelligence, these qualities can
be easily commanded.
   Do witnesses, as they often have done, refuse to surrender
names, and communicate to the proper  tribunals the informa-
tion they possess, and which the law expressly and authorita-
tively demands of them, respecting gambling and its perpetra-
tors?   Let them be rigidly, and without  respect to persons,
dealt with according to law;  and, more especially let them be
•regarded by their fellow citizens  with indignant reprobation,
as the friends of gamblers, the concealers  of their crimes, and
co-partners in their guilt.    Visit  on them the moral judgment
and its penalty, "He that is not for us is against us."   As re*
spects  the vice in question, this is a fearful truth.  Every man
in the community, who does not  zealously and actively unite
in the overthrow of this  evil,  is  virtually an abettor  of it.
His affected neutrality is  a departure from duty, and deserves
to wear a more condemnatory name.  It  is, as heretofore ob-
served, the result of moral cowardice, or of a culpable disre-
gard for the good of the  community.   When the public wel-
fare is  threatened, he that stands aloof in the character of a
neutral, is practically a traitor—the more especially if he has
intelligence respecting the  foe, which he refuses to impart.
In a word; at a  time like the present, when vice is struggling
to gain an ascendency, no enlightened and virtuous citizen can
be neutral.   He, therefore,  that assumes to be so, is wanting
in knowledge, discernment, or honesty—he may take his choice.
   As respects jurors, who are sworn to find and report accord-
ing to evidence, and who are usually possessed of intelligence
                 3 
18
A DISCOURSE ON' C-JAMBLING.
 and character, the case is still  more solemn  and momentous.
 When  men of this description  from prejudice, person d par-
 tiality,  a spirit of party, or any other sort of sinister feeling,
 sw-rve f om their duty, (; nd that they sometimes do so, is not
 to be questioned,) the delinquency is appalling; because, as far
 as it  extends, it  is a  death-blow at  once to justice and  right.
 It is perjury in its worst form,  and should be  visited as such,
 without regard to person or standing.   If, for any reason, law
 cannot  reach  the crime, public  opinion  c;>n.   And the  delin-
 quents  should be crushed, by the weight of opprobrium  indig-
 nantly thrown on them, by their injured fellow citizens.  Add-
 ed to their  being the friends of  gamblers, and accessories to
 their  crimes,  their deliberate profan l.tion of their appeal to
 Heaven, is daring impiety.   Jurors who thus betray  the  high
 trust  reposed in them, are among the rankest offenders against
 God and their country.   And, I repeat, that when  the evii  is
 so concealed by  cunning and artifice, as to  be inaccessible to
 law, it can be chastised only, and, if not irremediable, cured,
 by public indignation; and the manifestat'on of that should be
 open  and strong.   This  is the more necessary, as jurors are
 less accessible to law,  in punishment of their delinquencies, than
 almost any other class  of men  who abuse their  trust.  Tne
 very oath which  they violate, and an appeal by them to  their
 own consciences, which they have grossly offended, are artful-
 ly converted by them into coverings to screen them from legal
justice.   Such  artifice, however, should not be permitted to
 shield them from  reprobation and irretrievable disgr ce.
  In a case like the present, what shall we say of lawyers, and
 the course which some of them habitually pursue ?   When the
 public welfare is at stake on one side,;nd the fate of a notorious
 malefactor on  the other, are gentlemen of the bar such privi-
leged characters, as to be at liberty  to take ground, plead, and
man<Buvre according  as pecuniary  interest may invite themi,
without being amenable to the moral sense of the community,
for the nature, as well  as the issue of their conduct?   In plain
langu ige, is it consistent with either morality, patriotism, or
honour in them, to defend for a bribe, under  the appellation of 
                  A DISCOURSE #N GAMBLING.               19

 nfee, a licentious profligate and hardened offender  against his
 country  and his race?   Stronger still; do  they  not render
 themselves participators in  his guilt, by receiving, as hiie, a
 portion of his fraudulent gains, for conspiring to free him from
 punishment and bonds, that he may commence again  his ca-
 reer of iniquity?   Do  they  not  identify themselves with the
 culprit, and sully their  own characters, precisely in proportion
 to the zeal they manifest and the effort  they make to cover or
 whiten, by professional art and ingenuity, the indelible stains,
 which they know are affixed to the character of their client?
   However harsh and uncharitable it may appear, and how-
 ever contrary to common  belief, to answer these  latter ques-
 tions affirmatively, such is the only answer they  can receive
 from me.   From a negative reply  my  conscience revoits, be-
 cause my judgment decides against it.   Regardless, then, of
 consequences, and without the slightest apprehension of being
 found in the wrong, I assert that the lawyer who prostitutes Lis
 profession to purposes  so unhallowed, is an abettor of the fu-
 ture guilt of the felon  he liberates.  I  mean, of course, when
 he knows him to be guilty—and such knowledge he often pos-
 sesses, yet perseveres in his defence.
   Tell not  me,  as I have been told, that the custom of the bar
 admits  such defence  and even sanctions  it;  and that  if one
 lawyer does not receive the fee and defend the culprit, another
 will.  If  this be true, the morality of the bar is in a fallen con-
 dition; and the whole profession of the law, intended as a safe-
 guard of human right, is itself but  a system of lawless trick-
 ery subversive of right.  But it cannot be  true.  The impu-
 tation  must be slanderous.   The custom of the bar to sanc-
 tion falsehood, and encourrge knavery.1   Impossible!  The bar,
 as a bo-.ty, is as  honourable  and patriotic, as  it is gifted and
 powerful.  The  practice  in question  belongs but to  a few
 soraid and unworthy mem ers  of the  bar, who are a scandal to
 their profession, and a nuisance in the community.  Nor should
 their fellow members regard  such unprincipled conduct with
indifference.   It is a blot on  the escutcheon of each of them,
which  those who are  sound in principle and  awake to their 
20
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
own reputation and interest, should promptly erase, by frown-
ing on the offenders, and holding no companionship with them.
The lawyer, who, forgetful of what is  due to his country and
his  profession, to virtue  and himself, labours, for pay, in de-
fence  of the black-leg, beyond the obvious intendment of the
law, and thus  obstructs  the  current of justice, or diverts  it
from  its course—the lawyer, I repeat, who  does this, is an
enemy to society, the friend  and protector of felons, and an
actual associate  in their  turpitude and  crimes.   As such, he
forfeits his claim to the esteem of the virtuous, and the patron-
age' of the public.  Professionally,  he is  no  better than an
outlaw; because  he strives  professionally to defeat the law.
And it is no less  culpable in him to frustrate law by artifice,
than it would be  to violate  it by crime.   In the eye of  Hea-
ven, the employment of  such artifice renders him a criminal.
Being regardless  of human  welfare,  and even conspiring to
destroy it, he should be treated as an alien from human  sym-
pathy, and be compelled to live in solitude, or consort with
the felons, whom it delights him to defend.   The  business  of
the advocate is, to see that his client suffer  no legal  wrong;
but that the law, under which he is tried, be fairly interpreted,
applied, and executed;  and there  his duty  ends.  By going
beyond this, and striving to procure the acquittal of the guilty,
he becomes himself a culprit, and should receive from justice,
in some form, a suitable reward.
   Let the advocate of the black-leg be thus  dealt with, and a
sense of interest will accomplish  the work, in which  a senti-
ment of virtue and honour had failed.   The gentleman of the
law will do no more than his duty, the felon will be convicted
 and punished, and society will be freed from two of its plague-.
 spots—black-legs, and lawyers to  protect them in  their crimes*
 I shall only add, that  when gentlemen of the bar are  familiar
 with gamblers in the streets, and defend them in courts of jus-
 tice,  their conduct affords strong ground of suspicion, that they
 associate with them elsewhere, and join in their vices.   A re-
 gard for their own personal character, therefore, invokes  them
 to beware.  And, if they have families, the appeal  to them is
 tenfold stronger and more touching, not  to sully and  degrade 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLfNG.
21
the standing and reputation of the helpless and unoffending, by
their dissolute  practices.—It  is to be  distinctly understood,
that these remarks  have no  personalities in them.  Should
there be found in them, however, a picture of the  conduct of
any member of the  bar, the  fault  will not be mine.  Let no
one commit the offences described, and the description will be
pointless.   After this disavowal of all intention to assail per-
sonal  character, I shall feel equally guiltless and regardless of
any exception that may be taken to my words.  I know them
to be true, consider  them sufficiently courteous towards the
professional crimes alluded to, and  their offending authors, and
am prepared to maintain them.
   That those who occupy the  judgment seat, ard are sworn
to observe righteousness,  and see  justice dispensed between
man and man, and between the culprit  and his  country,  and
who are appointed  to their  high  and responsible calling, on
account of their well-tried   integrity  and  patriotism—that
magistrates thus  pledged and  confided in, will  destroy  their
own characters and prospects, wrong the community, disgrace
their families, and mortify their friends, by corruptly extending
partiality and friendship to black-legs and felons, it would be un-
charitable and almost sacrilegious to suspect. Yet I have known,
on such occasions, a want of  firmness and manly resolution to
be imputed to the bench.  I shall only further observe, that, for
offences of the kind, in other countries, judges  have suffered.
death; and that the lightest punishment, in this country, should
be, removal from office, disfranchisement, and infamy.
   Much of the  efficiency and usefulness of judicial tribunals
depends on the competency and fidelity of constables, sheriffs,
and marshals.  If they,  becoming  leagued in guilt with the
guilty, and in disorder with  the disorderly, neglect  to arrest
them, or connive at their escape, the  designs of penal  law
must be frustrated, and crimes will multiply.  None but well-
tried characters, therefore, should be appointed to such offices;
and all delinquency  in them should be punished  to the extent
of vested authority.
   Let the laws of Kentucky against  the vice of gambling be
executed in conformity  to the foregoing principles, and the 
22
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING,
 time is not distant, when professional gamblers will be driven
 from the Commonwealth.   Their pandemoniums  of guilt and
 licentiousness will be turned into places of industry and good
 order;  and to the scenes where they had spread desolation i.nd
 mourning, prosperity, content, and cheerfutness will  return.
 Such is  the fate that awaits the black-leg, and such the bright-
 ness of the prospect  before us, if we pursue the steps which
 the crisis demands.  The dayspring of purer morals and better
 times is about to open on us, unless, by indolence, a want of wis-
 dom, or something worse,  we  defeat the omen, and welcome
 the worst that licentiousness can do.  Provided we do our duty
 to ourselves and the  community, our youth will henceforward
 have fewer temptations to  profligacy, the tarnished reputation
 of our  city will brighten, our seats of instruction will flourish,
 and business, in all its departments, will be benefited.    Best
 of all; our moral atmosphere will  be cleansed from the  leprous
 poison that infects it.
  But that the work of reformation may be complete, family
 gambling in our city must  be suppressed, and gentlemen gam-
 blers compelled to abandon their profligate occupation.   That
 the first of these is the fatal  source of the entire evil, has been
 already asserted, and is susceptible of proof.   Had a domestic
 game of cards never  been   played  by the parents,  the sons
 would never have f .lien a prey to black-legs, nor have become
 black-legs  themselves.  Nor is  it possible to exterminate the
 latter, until the former shall  be abandoned.   We charge pro-
 fessional gambles with the corruption nd ruin of  our  youth;
 and in part the accusation is just.   But the mischief does not
 begin w th them.   It  begins, I  say, at home—in the drawing
room,- the parlour, or  perhaps  the  nursery, of  the parental
 dwelling.   There the fatal  corruption is engendered.   There
the child witnesses gambling, and  is often  supplied with cards,
as playthings to grow familiar with, and become attached to—
(Better that he were supplied with the asp or the  basilisk  to
"st'ng him deid," and save him from future dissoluteness and
ruin)—There  the boy  learns to gamble  with his equals, the
bet  being small; but still it is a bet, and  ripens the spirit  of 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
23
 hazard for something larger.   Thus initiated at,' ornc, the youth
 plays w,th his fellow youth  at schooi, at college, ,t watering
 places, and elsewhere, for higher stakes, until he encounters
 the black-leg, is seduced, rifled, demoralized, and destroyed!
 Such are the stages of this "road to ruin"—the  bitter fruit of
 parental example, at that fountain, of profligacy, the domestic
 card table—a fruit scarcely  less fatal and accursed, then that
 of the
         "-------- forbidden tree, whose mortal tu«te
         " Broiiiihr death into the world, and all our "wo!"
   It is a melancholy truth that most of the young men of Lex-
 ington gamble—some of them deeply—others more sparingly;'
 and that not a few of them have become black-legs and vaga-
 bonds.  And I venture to say, that every individual thus de-
 stroyed, has been first taught the use of cards, and had his spir-
 it of bett'ng first awakened, by the fireside of his home—per-
 haps even under the eye of his mother—so  reckless are men
 and women too, of the issue  of their  conduct!   How worse
 then maddening to parents possessed of reflection, conscience,
 and natural affection, must 'be t e Lemembrance, that, by  the
 lawless indulgence of their own propensities, they have made
 felons  of their sons!   If such parents can rest on  their pillows,
 under  a consciousness of the  ruin they have  wrought—know-
 ing that by the influence of their own  vices, those whom they
 should have trained to morality and virtue, are rioting amidst
 the orgies of a gaming-house, or weltering in some .other sink
 of corruption and debauchery—those parents, who, under such
 circumstances, c n fold  their arms, and repose in tranquillity
 during the lonely and solemn hours when "day has departed,"
 and conscience comes home, to applaud or condemn—those, I
 say, who can thus throw  from them, as worthless things, all
 that gives hallowedness to the relation of parent, and value and
 attractiveness to human nature—but  the picture is too mon-
 strous  and hateful to have reality in it, or to be even possible.
 Nothing human can be so hardened and depraved.  I shall dis-
miss it, therefore, as a creation of fancy, with the single ' emark,
that  the reverse of it is often true.   Parents have  agonized 
24
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
 under the worm of conscience, from a never-sleeping remem-
 brance,  that  their own examples,  in famihj-gamblings  have
 brought destruction on their children.   And while the practice
 continues, its effects wTill be the same, as naturally and certain-
 ly, as light precedes the rising, and darkness follows the setting^
 of the sun.  How deep, then, is the crime, and how awful the
 responsibility of those parents,  who, apprized of its  conse-
 quences, persist in the evil! '  Better—infinitely better, to al-
 low children, through neglect, to perish  in their innocence,
 than thus to train' them to profligacy  and perdition!  In an-
 cient Persia, where all were Pagans, individuals thus offend-
'ing, besides suffering punishment, would have had their  sons
 taken  from them, and placed in institutions of security and
 sound discipline, by the authority of the State.    Yet, in this
 land of  Christianity and furious piety—real or affected—-the
 evil stands unremedied.  Were Persian measures pursued here,
 the result would  be salutary.   Family gambling  would soon
 be extinguished; and children would be no longer the victims
 of parental enormities.  In the mean time, the remedies in our
 power should be vigorously applied.  Let the law be  enforced,
 and let  public sentiment  proclaim  its  reprobation, with the
 requisite energy and by practical measures, and the evil  will
 disappear.  The domestic  card table will be no longer a blight
 to our youth,  a disgrace to families, and a scandal to our city.
   But I  have  to notice another class of arch-offenders, whose
 characters are rather hybridous and equivocal,.being composed
 in part of  the qualities of the black-leg, and in part, perhaps, of
 those of the honest man.   I allude to our gentlemen gamblers,
 who, though not yet, I trust, entirely lost, are morally pestilent
 in.their influence  on others, and posting to destruction, as re-
 spects themselves.  These doubtful  beings, who, like  "whited
 sepulchres," are  sufficiently fair and attractive without, but
 rank with corruption  and turpitude within, though they are
 ostensibly engaged in some lawful calling, and escape in conse-
 quence the punishment of  vagrants, derive perhaps their chief
 subsistence from the spoils of the gaming table.  Some of.them
 are really men of business and profession, by day, and resort 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
25
  to that palladium of abomination,  the  gaming-house, only by
  night—or when absent from their homes, and from under the
  rebuking eye of their neighbours, whom they are fearful to of-
  fend—or whom they  wish to deceive, by exterior fairness.
  Rarely indulging in  deep hazards  elsewhere,  they haunt ho-
  tels, coffee-houses, and other places less  creditable, where they
  prey on each other; or, more execrable still, lurk in ambush,
  and spread their toils for the inexperienced and unwary.   Be-
  yond  all other offenders,  they are dangerous to the peace of
  families and the morals of the  rising generation.  They pre-
  pare covert pitfalls and  snares, from which escape is nearly
 hopeless.   Added to their artfulness and satanical designs,
 their manners  are  peculiarly enticing  and seductive.   And
 they act by system.   They induce their youthful  victim first
 to drink and then to play.  Thus ensnared, and completely in
 their power, they  rifle him for the time,  but  encourage him
 with the hope, that he will be more fortunate on another oc-
 casion.   At an appointed time he  meets them again, and is
 again despoiled.  A third and a fourth  effort  to retrieve  his
 losses are  equally  unsuccessful, until, driven to desperation,
 he ventures his all, is beggared and  destroyed.  Nor does the
 disaster terminate here.   He either becomes an  abandoned
 gamester, resolved on the robbery and ruin of others, or, torn
 by remorse on account of his misconduct,  and maddened by
 his losses, he  flies  to suicide, as a refuge from wretchedness*
 Is he only a son and a brother?  Grief and mortification cover
 his family.  Is he a husband and a father?   His wife and chil-
 dren are plunged into the abyss of misery and want.  Affluent
 to-day, they are paupers to-morrow! but a single night sepa-
 rating their prosperity from  their ruin!   This is no  fancy
 piece.  It  is a faint  delineation of what daily occurs*  And
 by whom is the scene of desolation  consummated ?  By gen-
 tlemen gamblers, who triumph  in their success, revel in  their
 spoils, and even look, with a fiend-like satisfaction, on the per-
dition they have effected!   Perhaps  the  most  disgraceful and
alarming features of this picture are  yet  to be sketched.  Not
only do these high-handed tramplers on  morality and law
             4 
26
A discourse on GAMBLING.
abound in our country;  in many places they dictate the fash-
ion, give to society  its  tone and character, and  administer
some  of the principal offices of the State.   Worse, if possi-
ble; many  of them are concerned in framing the laws against
gambling, which they thus flagitiously violate and annul! To the
dishonour of our public councils, not a few members both of the
State and  National  Legislatures,  are notorious gamblers!
While they rob individuals, and demoralize the country, the
country, in return, confers honours and emoluments on them,
and individuals pay them homage!
   Such is the  evil, and  such  the standing  and influence  of
those who perpetrate it.   But, provided it be resolutely and
skilfully opposed,  its extinguishment  is easy.    Gentlemen
gamblers are as amenable to the law, as vagrants and black-
legs;  and they are much more  amenable to public opinion.
Nor  should lenity be extended to them.   Our  duty  to God,
our country, and our race,  demands of us, that they be pro-
ceeded against by law, as promptly and sternly,  as the drunk-
en vagabond who disgraces  our streets, or the blustering bul-
ly, whose  delight is in indecency and profanity, battery and
uproar.   In truth they should be much more  rigorously co-
erced and punished than either; because, all things  considered,
their lives  are  more scandalous, and their vices far more se-
 ductive and pernicious.   And the higher their  standing and
 the  wider and weightier their influence, the more ruinous is
 their example.  I need  scarcely add, that the severer should
 be their punishment, and the more certain  its infliction.   To
 suffer them to escape, and punish none but humble offenders,
 is worse than injustice.   It is a vicious  and  dishonourable
 compromise with  crime, and  bespeaks in those who  adminis-
 ter the laws, and are guilty of it, a spirit of corruption, or a
 mean and truckling submission to men, because they are called
 great.   To make the best  of them, gentlemen  gamblers pre-
 eminent in talents,  rank, and influence, are but Arch-angels
 fallen and turned  to Arch-demons, conspicuous alike for the
 sum of their vices, and  their power to effect by them the work
 of perdition!  Jjet them be arrested, therefore, in their homes, 
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
27
in their haunts when lurking for  their prey, in  the midst of
their midnight orgies, or wherever else  they may  be found,
conducted to the tribunals of their insulted country, and sub-
jected  to the penalty of offended justice  and  violated law.
Nor should the proceedings  against  them terminate here.
Let them be degraded in society, by expulsion from the com-
panionship of the virtuous and the  honorable.    In a special
manner, let them be so  far disfranchised, as to be proclaimed,
by the the voice of the people, unfit for places of public trust;
and let the proclamation be sanctioned and reduced to prac-
tice, on the hustings, and at the ballot box.  Be it distinctly
understood, as the resolution of the community, that no gam-
bler, who sets law at defiance, shall  pollute by  his breath, in
a public capacity,  the atmosphere of the capitol, where laws
are enacted.   Finally, let them be exiled horn fashionable life,
a form of punishment more grievous to many  of them, than
exile from honour, or even from their country!   Were the en-
tire tribe of gentlemen gamblers thus attainted in public opin-
ion, and thus treated in law, scorn would soon assail  them, and
complete their degradation.   The issue  would  be,  that their
career would be  abandoned by  them; or, driven to despair,
they would become open black-legs,  and suffer ultimately the
penalty of their offences.   In either  case they would be ren-
dered harmless; and their monitory example would  deter oth-
ers from treading in their footsteps.  He that will furnish me
with a sound reason, why gamblers of any description should
be admitted into virtuous society,  and highwaymen  excluded,
will teach me something new.  Where the latter rob once, the
former rob twenty times, and take forcible possession of a hun-
dred fold the amount of  forbidden gain.
  There is yet another  measure, the adoption of which would
be eminently instrumental in the suppression of gaming.  Too
many  of our public hotels  are the  haunts of gamblers, who
convert them into dens  of pocket-picking, and other forms of
vice and knavery,  peculiarly dangerous  to  strangers who re-
sort to them.  Let  such establishments be marked and frowned
on, discouraged and avoided by the virtuous and orderly por- 
28
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
 tion of the community; let the foulness of their characters be
 made publicly known, as a warning to travellers;  and let the
 laws against gambling be unsparingly executed on the offend-
 ers who keep them.  Let fines be imposed and exacted, to the
 letter  and entire  extent of the law, and  let forfeitures of li-
 cences be rigidly enforced.
   Am I told that gambling is practised in  hotels, without the
 knowledge of their keepers, who are therefore innocent of the
 crime whose existence is concealed from  them?  I do not be-
 lieve it.  If gambling be carried on in a hotel, and the landlord
 be ignorant of it, his ignorance is voluntary.  He is intentional-
 ly blind toward the vice and its consequences, instead of being
 vigilant  to detect and suppress it.   It places in his pocket a
 portion  of the pillage-money extorted from the unfortunate,
 and  he  therefore  permits  and virtually encourages it.   At
 most public houses gamblers are welcome guests, because they
 are profitable ones—spending liberally the gains of their iniqui-
 ty.  Tell not me  that the keeper of a hotel  cannot prevent
 gambling among those he entertains.  By suitable rules  and
 regulations strictly enforced, he can prevent it, because it has
 been  thus prevented; and if he neglects his duty, by patronizing
 vice, or secretly winking at it, let him suffer the penalty.   And
 let'a portion of that penalty be,  expulsion from  the ranks of
 the honourable and the honest!
   Once more.   We have among us a class of tradesmen and
 mechanics, especially those who furnish articles of gentlemen's
 apparel, with whom gamblers are peculiar favourites; and who,
 therefore, virtually countenance and encourage them.   The
 reason is plain. Gamblers dress well, pay well, and are excellent
 customers.  Like  other free-booters, they spend their money
liberally; and that is their passport to favour and friendship.
  But  whence,  and by what means do they procure their
money?  This should be a serious question, when addressed
to the consciences of those who receive it from them, many of
whom are professors of religion.  Gamblers are known to live
by fraud; their money is the product of fraud; those, there-
fore, who receive it from  them, fully apprised of their being 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
29
gamblers, participate in the fraud, and are practical abettors of
it.  The receivers of stolen goods are accessories of theft, and
held criminal in law.  Why?  Because they know the goods to
be stolen.  To him who receives the black-leg's money, the
same  principle of justice applies.   He knows it to have been
fraudulently  acquired.   In the eye of reason, therefore, and
in the eye of Heaven, he is accessary to the crime.
  But the criminal manner in which gamblers procure their
means is not the only reason why philanthropists and those
who make a profession of religion should refuse to become the
possessors of them.  They are often won from husbands and
fathers,  to the penury and want of wives and children; and
from sons, to the beggary and ruin of widowed mothers. Such
inhuman and unmanly traits of  barbarity, therefore, superadd-
ed to  the abstract crime of gambling, deepen its atrocity, and
render it more hideous.
  If,  notwithstanding  these  considerations, tradesmen  and
others continue to deal with  gamblers, and countenance their
vices, their consciences are callous, their rectitude a counterfeit,
and their religion a  mockery.  Under such  circumstances, to
implore on their knees, as many of them habitually do, a bless-
ing from Heaven on the issue of their labours, is virtual  bias-
phemy!   It is an impious supplication to a God of purity, that
he would countenance their sins,  and become a partner  in
their guilt. No language can express the turpitude and hateful-
ness of  hypocrisy like this.  Compared to the depth and dark-
ness of its iniquity, open atheism might almost be said to whiten
into virtue!
  Let such be the social, moral, and legal proceedings against
black-legs and  gamblers  of every description, and much will
be done towards purifying the world from  their leprous conta-
gion.
  But penal and prohibitory laws cannot alone secure society
from the vice of gambling.  Their chief aim being to deter
from crime by the apprehension of punishment, they operate
almost exclusively on the feeling of fear.  Much more digni-
fied and effectual than this, is the policy of  withholding men 
30
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
from crime, by teaching them to dislike it.  If youth be suita-
bly trained, they will abhor vice of every description, and ad-
here to virtue from virtuous feeling.  Their ruling  instincts
will be opposed to crime.  These form a tie to restrain them
from  wrong-doing of  every  description,   infinitely strong-
er than any form of statute laws.   They render men literally
"a law unto themselves."  Those  who  are thus constituted
and trained, ineline to a moral cynosure, as the needle points
to the  cynosure in the heavens.  Nor, provided the  requisite
measures  be pursued, is it difficult to bring the mind to this
glorious condition.  Means to that effect will be furnished by
a well directed moral education.
  By such an education, then, the laws against gambling should
be backed and fortified.  Instead of being trained to the prac-
tice of that vice, by domestic example and  actual experience,
let the  rising generation be thoroughly instructed in its flagi-
tious nature and ruinous effects, and  strictly debarred from it
by suitable regulations,  and the  evil will disappear.  Let this
discipline  begin in the nursery, and be continued in  the parlour.
From thence let it be transferred to schools and colleges, and
all other plaCes where youth assemble, and gamblers aud black-
legs, ceasing to  have  an existence, will become but names in
dictionaries, and characters in history.  Nor is it possible to
eradicate  the  vice completely  in  any  other  way.   If  you
would  destroy  the poison-weed, you  must strike  at  its root.
To purify the stream, you must cleanse  the fountain.   But I
add, with  confidence, that, in the way proposed, the evil can
be eradicated, as easily and certainly, as the green leaf fails
when the  sap-juice is withdrawn.
   As heretofore mentioned, domestic gambling is  the  pestife-
rous source of all other forms of the vice.  By moral educa-
tion that will be dried up, and its  issues and their deleterious
influences extinguished.  Overwhelmed  in gambling, then, as
the present generation unfortunately is, to rescue the next from
it. is perfectly practicable.  An important, if not a necessary
auxiliary in this great work of reformation, would be an abso-
lute prohibition of traffic  in  playing-cards.  And it is to be 
A .DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
31
ardently desired, that the Legislature of Kentucky would pass
a law, rendering it penal to deal, in any way, in an article  so
destructive to the morals of the State—or that they would im-
pose such a  duty on cards, as  would annihilate the trade in
them within the Commonwealth.  Were Kentucky to take the
lead in  this effort at reform, other States might follow the ex-
ample.  Nor do I hesitate to add, that such a law would be, not
only in a high  degree  beneficial to our community, but hon-
orable to our Legislature.   It would be one of the wisest and
most useful laws in the statute book.  But as long as gamblers
shall be elected to the Legislature, the passage of such an act
can hardly be hoped for.  Let public indignation at their vices
render them ineligible, and the requisite law will be immedi-
ately passed.
  Another'measure  that would  contribute abundantly  to the
extinction  of gambling, is the  suppression  of  horse-racing.
For  reasons that  may  be easily  rendered,   that  is   itself
a very  seductive and  ruinous form of gaming.   It is,  more-
over, the foster-mother of a fearful  amount of idleness and
riot, dissipation and  vice.  And that this aggregate of causes
prepares the mind for crime of every description, no one who
understands human nature will deny.   That  theft and pocket-
picking, drunkenness, and other forms of debauchery are the
growth of the race-field,  is fully confirmed by all experience.
So  are  personal combat and riot, with their frequent concom-
itants,  mutilation and murder.   Durng the last disgraceful
jockey-week in this place, several Jttempts at  assassination
were made, one or two of which were near proving fatal. On
former  occasions lives  have been bst under similar circum-
stances.  In fact, the turf is one of the chosen scenes, where
all  the  gross  and turbulent passions  hold  high  carnival, and
revel uncontrolled.   Neither mental sobriety, practical virtue,
strict moral  feeling, nor any other praiseworthy attribute of
mind can find a foothold in so wild, and rude, and reckless a
carousal.   In these  orgies of the race-ground, there is  much
more of brutishness, and less of humanity, than the lovers of
the  sport are willing  to acknowledge, or have seriously thought 
32               A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
of.   In truth, they are nothing but a spectacle of brutishness,
tricked off by some of the gaudy trappings  of humanity, to
gratify a coarse and  uncultivated  taste.   Should this  charge
be questioned, it  can be amply maintained  by a substantial
analysis  of them.  In plain terms;  aside from its pernicious
influence, horse-racing is a barbarous and degrading amusement,
but little superior to the bull-fighting of the Spaniards, or the
cock-fighting of the Malays.  It often breaks down, and ruins
for life, the fine  animals devoted to it, that  might have been
humanely and safely trained by their owners to valuable pur-
poses.  The enjoyment of it, I  say,  belongs as exclusively to
our  animal nature, as drinking, boxing, or profane  swearing,
and  has  as little "relish of salvation  in it."  That females
should delight in it, therefore, is matter of amazement, and be-
trays in them a taste of but humble refinement.  My reference
is to a taste for the entire turf scene*  Could the noble animals^
that constitute  alone the objects of attraction, and that so far
surpass, in generous  and lofty  qualities, most of the  human
beings around them—could they, free from injury to themselves,
be gazed on in their pride and glory, outstripping in  fleetness the
wind that pursues them, and matching  in grace the  silver-
footed antelope, apart from the vulgar uproar of the occasion,
and the accompanying knavishness of betting, jockeying, and
other forms of overreaching and  dishonesty—could this  be
done, I say, the case wiuld be different.   But, that the spec-
tacle, as it is, can afford gratification to a  truly refined and cul-
tivated female, may be p-onounced impossible.  And when, to
other female attributes, \\ added that of a pure conscience, and
a resolution not to counterance vice, the field should be revolting
to her.   Nor can aught out fashion, the arbitress of the sex,
and too  often the vanquisher of duty and propriety  in them,
lead such a being, in opposition to her nature, to a show so un-
suitable to her.
   But the chief ground, on which  horse-racing contributes to
the promotion  of other forms of gambling, is yet to be men-
tioned.    It excites an ungovernable spirit of adventure.  I
mean the sordid and dishonest adventure of betting*  Persons
who had never laid a wager before, often bet in  a  race-field, 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
33
 in imitation of those around them, and through the influence of
 sympathy with  the maddened  multitude.   Young men are
 further induced to bet, lest they should be suspected of a deficien-
 cy in manliness of spirit.  Nor is the wager always confined
 to the speed  of the horses.   It often extends to such other
 sorts of hazard, as may happen to present themselves, of which
 card-playing is at once the most frequent and seductive.  This
 awakened propensity  to risk, moreover, is not limited to the
 race-field.  It does not,  I mean, subside, when the field is de-
 serted.   It accompanies those who have felt it to  their lodg-
 ings or their homes, and is there, by the farther excitement of
 intemperate drinking and importunate companions, reduced to
 practice, at cards, dice,  or some other alluring game  of haz-
 ard.  Such is often the commencement of a career, whose end
 is destined  to be profligacy and want, accompanied  by the
 sufferings of self-shattered health, and the severer pangs of an
 offended conscience.
   That this representation is not exaggerated, but that  it even
 falls short of the truth, might  be easily proved  by indubitable
 testimony.   Nor need such testimony  be sought for at a dis-
 tance.  The turf-scenes of our own city furnish it abundantly.
 More gambling and idleness, dissipation and vice of every de-
 scription, and every  degree of atrocity and guilt, occur in
 Lexington during each week of our races, than during  any
 other six weeks of the entire year—and perhaps in a still high-
 er proportion.   No'inhabitant of the place, of any standing
 and  observation, will  hazard  his reputation  by a  denial of
 this.*  From  the commencement  to the close of the sports,
 our city  presents, by  day, a  disgraceful  scene of  confusion
 and hubbub, and, by night, a revolting spectacle of gambling
 and  drunkenness, debauchery  and crime;  During this  unbri-
 dled explosion of the vices, neither servants, apprentices, jour-
 neymen, clerks, nor any other description of labourers, or
 hired men of business can be held to their duty.  In defiance
of advice, remonstrance, and  command, they abandon their
employments, rush to  the carnival, gamble, drink, quarrel,
blaspheme, and perpetrate all other sorts of enormity.  Or if
               5 
34
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
authoritatively withheld from the intoxicating revel,  they be-
come sullen, dissatisfied, and useless at home.  On youths pur-
suing their education, the effects of these occasions are de-
plorable.   Under the influence of such boisterous  and con-
taminating examples, their studies and morals  are  but chaff
before the whirlwind.    Even  boys, who  are yet but in the
gristle of childhood, join in the tumult, and drink in  the infec-
tion, which is to make lepers of them for life.
  Added to the fearful mass of immorality engendered on the
occasion, Lexington loses, by idleness, during each race-week,
many thousands of dollars.  Nearly another week elapses be-
fore the idlers return to  settled industry—and some of them
never return, but, from the taste they have acquired, become
profligates and vagabonds.   Another item of mischief to be
subjoined, is  the sickness produced by, the irregularities of the
occasion.   In a word; except the hotels, drinking-houses, and
another description of houses not to be named, there is scarce-
ly an  establishment in our city, that does  not suffer  in its in-
terests, by our races.
   Such are some of the  blessings derived by Lexington, from
the operations of her "Jockey  Club!"—a phrase which is but
a synonyme of trickery and knavishness!—a club to  which no
good citizen  can consistently belong; and  from  which men of
honour should turn, as from a thing that degrades them!  Look
into your dictionaries, and see  if I am not  right.  "A jockey-
a cheat, a trickish fellow/"  What meaning  should be affixed
then to an association of jockies?   I only ask the  question.
Let others answer it.  And I ask again: Is there a jockey gen-
tleman, who owns  a running horse, or a  brother jockey who
 bets on him, that would not be delighted  to witness his suc-
 cess in the course, in consequence  of some  artful manoeuvre
 of jockey-ship by the rider, not forbidden by the canons of the
 "Club?"   And I fearlessly  answer, not one.   Horse-racing,
 overreaching, and cheating, are, in spirit and practice, synony-
 mous terms.   He, therefore, who devotes himself to the for-
 mer, must lay his account to be suspected of the two latter—
 I doubt not  with entire justice.   There is reason to believe, 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.               3&
that a turf-bred sportsman strictly honest is yet to be formed.
Nor  is the influence of this "association of jockies" confined
to Lexington.    It  extends to  no inconsiderable  distance
through the country.   By resorting to the race-ground, and
uniting in the uproar, farmers and  their  sons consume their
time, and  often squander  their property,  injure  their health
and. reputation, and, worst.of all, contaminate their minds.
  Notwithstanding these enormities (and the picture might be
heightened without exaggeration) some of our most influential
citizens are avowTed patrons of horse-racing,  and abettors,  of
course, of its concomitant evils.  Not only do they resort to
the race-field themselves, join in its  revelry, and partake of
its bets in the hope of forbidden  gain; they  encourage their
sons and daughters to  accompany them.   Thus do they vir-
tually pander to passions, that may ultimately lead to the per-
dition of their children!   Let no  one, who thus acts, proclaim
himself a foe to gambling!   His practice  falsifies his profes-
sion, and proves him  inconsistent, if not insincere.   A foe to
gambling, yet an  advocate of horse-racing!  Silly incongrui-
ty!  A grosser incompatibility cannot be imagined.  An at-
tempt to palm on the public a fiction so shallow and self-con-
tradictory, is an insult to their understanding.  He that is a
member  of the Lexington "Jockey Club," or an encourager,
in any way, of the Lexington  races, is essentially an acces-
sory to Lexington gambling, and to all its consequences. And
one of those consequences is the certain  extinction  of what
yet remains of our seats  of learning.   Let us no longer at-
tempt to hoodwink ourselves and others, on this most interest-
ing and momentous topic. Gambling and the proper instruc-
tion of youth, whether male or female, can never spring from
the same  soil, or flourish  under  the influence of the same at-
mosphere.   As soon  shall virtue and vice of any other  de-
scription find a common parentage.   What is food to the one,
is the essence  of the deadly nightshade to the other.  We
must extirpate gambling,  then, or surrender to it our seats of
education,  and, from  the "Athens of the  West," become  a
modern Sodom!—But to return to horse-racing* 
36
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
   The advocate of that practice, I say, has no alternative, but
 to abandon the turf, or  submit to be pointed at, as the friend
 of the black-leg.   Sooner shall oil and water unite, without an
 intermedium, than a love of horse-racing and hostility to  gam-
 bling amalgamate in the same individual!  I have no patience
 with professions and pretensions so utterly inconsistent and
 self-subversive.  I would  entreat  sensible men, who deal in
 them, therefore, to pause and reflect,  before they thus expose
 themselves to such galling imputations.   To make the best of
 their disjointed and culpable conduct, they but withhold nour-
 ishment from the serpent, with one hand, while they feed him
 with the other.  Nor will he be the less inclined to sting them
 or their connexions, because  they thus "palter with him in a
 double sense."   Might I speak of the motives of such gentle-
 men, I would say, that they have, on this subject, no correct
 controlling principle, whose  dictates they  follow.  Selfish
views of expedience, or the love of a temporary gratification
 equally selfish, engross and govern them.  They resemble po-
litical trimmers,  who have two parties,  whose favours they
wish to conciliate and secure.   I tell them, however, plainly,
that  their course is as fallacious and fruitless, as  it is hollow
and  discreditable.  Of this let them be assured, that they can-
not effectually "serve God and Mammon".
  That my views on the subject may be more clearly under-
stood, I shall repeat an objection to horse-racing, heretofore
made, which nothing can remove.  The practice is as fraudu-
lent and immoral as card-playing.  I mean, when betting is in-
dulged in, as it always is. The money won is extorted from the
loser, against his  will, ivithout the return of any equivalent.
And  that is  the essence of fraud, whatever name the mode of
gaining possession of the money may bear.  Call it gambling
or theft, horse-racing, pocket-picking, robbery, or piracy—the
term that  designates it, does not change the  nature of the
deed.  Tell not me, in defence of the. practice, that the man
who  loses his bet, on the race ground, surrenders  his money
voluntarily*  So does the traveller, when the pistol of the foot-
pad is at his breast.  In the latter case, the love of life extorts 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
37
the purse; in the former a sense of fictitious honour.   In prin-
ciple then, though not in manner, the successful better and the
robber are identified.
  From the  foregoing premises, the inference is irresistible,
that, as far as his calling is concerned, the horse-racer, and all
who bet on the race, whether they lose or win, are dishonest
in purpose, and positive violators of moral law.   Their inten-
tion is to win, and to extract money from their opponents, in
despite of their wishes, without making  them a valuable re-
turn; and that, I say again, is unqualified knavery.   The law
of nature, which is but another name for the law of God, pro-
claims it so, whatever laws mistaken or interested Legislatures
may enact  to  the  contrary.   Though human statutes may
render horse-racing civilly and politically lawful, they can nev-
er render it morally so; because they can never wash  from it
the turpitude of forbidden gain.  In a word, horse-racing is as
palpable an infraction  of  the tenth commandment, as  theft is
of the eighth, or homicide of the sixth.   Yet many men, who
would be scandalized at the sight of theft, and shocked at that
of murder,  show clearly  by  their bets, and their  anxiety
to  win  them,  that they  furiously  covet  their  neighbour's
property.   So  true is it, that we make our own propensities
and wishes a measure of the value and authority of the divine
commands.
  I well know  that these  sentiments, respecting the sports of
the turf, are not the sentiments of the community at large. No
matter.  I  as  well  know, that their want of the  stamp of
fashion and currency, is no evidence of their want  of truth.
He that looks for correctness in public opinion, respecting mat-
ters where analysis and reflection are required, will be, for the
most part, disappointed.   I do not, however, know  that any
one contends for the strict and entire morality Of horse-racing.
It would surprise me not a little, to hear such a position main-
tained, by a truly enlightened and sound  principled  inquirer.
As soon would  I expect to be edified by a defence of swindling
or forgery!   Men who have  never seriously reflected on the
evils of horse-racing, and who have been in the habit, all their 
38              A  DISCOURSE ON  GAMBLING.
lives, of witnessing it, with the thoughtless multitude, as a mat-
ter of course, may have a certain vague  and  dreamy belief,
that there is no harm in it.  But for any one possessed of com-
mon sense to arrive at such an  opinion, through observation
and reason, is absolutely impossible.
  As far as I am informed, racing is seriously defended only on
one ground—the notion, that it improves the breed of horses. If
this hypothesis be fallacious, the practice  is equally without
defence and  excuse.   And that it is fallacious seems  as clear,
as any proposition in political economy, the science to which
the inquiry belongs.
  That racing improves  the  breed of running horses, is not
denied.   Horses bred expressly  and skilfully to any practice
or mode of exercise are necessarily improved in it.  This is
as true of the inferior animals, as of man.  Nor is it less true
of vegetables, which are also improved by cultivation and train-
ing.  But it is denied, that a horse is valuable, in the  correct
sense of the term, in proportion to his fieetness.  If he is valua-
ble to those who win by betting on him, he is in an equal degree
detrimental to those who lose.  His value in the abstract there-
fore is  a nullity, because he produces nothing, the loss by him
on one side being an exact counterpoise to the gain on the other.
As well might it be  contended that a light, swift-footed man is
valuable and efficient,  as a member of society, in proportion
to his speed in a foot-race, or the distance he  can pass over at
asingleleap.  In truth, running horses and running men are rarely
fit for any thing else, than to excite a momentary wonderment,
by  the  swiftness, with which  they scamper over the ground.
In this plain practical country, where peace prevails, and use-
ful  industry should be pursued by every one, we have no call
for either the war-horse, or  the hunting-horse.  Hence  we
have never reared them, nor felt the want of them.   Nor are
we likely to do so,  until the  condition of our  country shall
have been entirely changed.   In the present discussion, there-
fore, those two breeds  must be  kept out  of view.   Besides,
the former of them and the running horse have no affinity to 
                  A DISC0UR6E ON GAMBWUG.                39

each other,  in  figure,  spirit, or action.  Nor are real hun-
ters and racers identical in qualities.
  In the United States,  we  want but three  classes of the
horse; the draft-horse, which may include the wagon  and the
dray, the cart and the plough horse;  the carriage horse; and
the saddle horse.   But  the  running horse is unfit for either.
Were there no other reason, his  training for the turf disquali-
fies him for such services.   No one would dream of employ-
ing the genuine light and springy racer, in the draft or the car-
riage.   An experiment to that effect would be quite as incon-
gruous, and  almost as  ludicrous, as  to select  the ponderous
dray-horse for the  race.   The farther consideration of those
two varieties also, therefore, (the draft and the carriage horse)
may be dismissed.  This brings the question to a single point.
Is the running horse qualified for the saddle, in proportion to
his  swiftness  and  training to  the turf?   No he is  not-  as
every  competent judge will testify;  and as experience  con-
firms. On the contrary, such training,unfits him for the saddle,
where sober and  durable  action is required.   In an evening
excursion, by the youthful, light, and dashing rider, whose ob-
ject is show, a fiery-spirited courser may be suitably employ-
ed.  In other words, he may answer for a parade and pleasure
horse.  But, for a heavy rider, and continued  service, more
especially for a long journey, he is altogether disqualified.   A
horse devoid of running qualities greatly surpasses him.  In
fine; a race-horse is fit  only for the race, as a swift sail-boat is
fit to sail, but not to carry freight.  His very figure and pro-
portions disqualify him for the  draught, the carriage, or the
saddle.   By no competent judge of horses will this be denied.
As well might it be denied  that the grey-hound is unfit for the
services of the wolf-dog.  The truth of all this is amply sus-
tained by the delineations of the different classes of the horse,
contained  in  Turf-registers,  and Agricultural  and Sporting
^Magazines.   It can be demonstrated  on  principles  strictly
mechanical, that the form of the racer disqualifies him for the
kind of action necessary in  the draught and the carriage horse,
and takes from him the endurance and sure-footedness of the
accomplished roadster. 
40
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
   True; what is called a "high  blooded horse" is superior to
one of ordinary blood.   And, by suitable breeding and train-
ing, he may be rendered more useful, and be of greater value.
But  every blood horse is not a runner, nor  even of the run-
ning breed.  Far from it.    Besides; be his blood and figure
what they may, if he is to be used under the saddle or in the
carriage, he should be trained  to those purposes; not  to the
race-track.   This is common sense, as well as the  dictate of
experience.  The horse, in  common with his master, has not
only his habits, but what may be properly enough called his
trades and occupations; and the trade and habits of the racer
are as different from  those  of the saddle, draft, or carriage
horse, as the trade and habits of the opera-dancer or the tumb-
ler are from those of the blacksmith or the agriculturist.  As
well, therefore, may an attempt be made to have a boy taught
the art of making hoes and  hobnails,  by apprenticing him  to
a cobler, as  to form a horse for the saddle, or any  other use-
ful employment, by breeding him to the  turf.   All this is fa-
miliar to the horse-breeders and trainers in England, who un-
derstand the animal better, and manage him more skilfully,
than any other people.   There, the blood  horse is used  for
sundry purposes, to which he is specially bred and disciplined.
But, as  soon would the project  be conceived  of converting
the high-bred racer into a cart-horse, as of employing him in
any family or  agricultural services.   He  is reared  and culti-
vated as an object and a means  of sport and pastime, and for
nothing else*   It is horses of good pedigree, unfit for the turf,
that are trained to useful purposes.
   I do not object, then, to the  production and  possession of
well blooded horses.  Far from it.  My  objection  is only to
the improper employment of them.   And surely it is as easy
to introduce and cultivate the breed without racing, as with
it.  In fact it is  easier as well as better;  because the racer is
often strained and incurably  injured  by  running; while, by
suitable and useful exercise, he would have been  strengthened
and improved.   I have  known some of the noblest animals I
have ever beheld rendered almost useless, by  two  or three 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
41
races;  whereas had they been disciplined to useful ends, their
durability would have  been greater, and their value much
higher.
  Let us rear high blooded horses, then, in America, as they do
in England; but let them be applied to American purposes; such
purposes, I mean, as the substantial interests of America  re-
quire;  and racing is  not of that description.   It  is an idle
sport, appropriate only  to the wealthy and the dissipated—to
a titled and an opulent aristocracy—who have no regular and
productive  employments, or other  modes of spending their
time, and circulating through the community their superfluous
wealth;  and who  are not injured by the loss  of bets.   As
well in its relation to the genius of our  government and the
spirit of our laws, as  to the texture  and condition of our  so-
ciety, horse-racing is an exotic practice, and should have neither
root nor culture among us.   It is utterly  unsuitable to Ameri-
cans, whose fortunes  are  small, and whose days should be de-
voted to productive industry, and useful pursuits.  In a word;
as practised in the United States, it is but a tasteless and  hu-
miliating imitation—a  pitiful mimickry  of an European cus-
tom, growing out of a state of society altogether peculiar to
the old world, and belonging to feudal and monarchical govern-
ments.  With genuine  republicanism it has no  more affinity,
than the  crown and the  sceptre.   Yet we take pride  in pro-
claiming ourselves republicans, and still cling to a sjmbol of
monarchy.
   Had the  law of primogeniture, one of the rankest features
of feudalism,  never, had an existence, neither in all probabili-
ty, would horse-racing.  And the abrogate of the former in
our country, should have been instantly followed by the aban-
donment of the latter.   Racing is av evil in any state  of  so-
ciety; but it is a much  more pern^ous one in American, than
in British society; because  its unfitness to the former is infi-
nitely  the greater.   Its adtftion by us, like  our  senseless
adoption of many other ur^Vecoming foreign customs, bespeaks
in us a slavish and degrading submission to imported  fashion.
A spirit of enlightened and manly Americanism  would  rid us
              6 
42
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
 of all these outlandish appendages, which create in us such a
 mongrel, piebald character, and bestow on us, in lieu of them,
 substantial nationality.   Nor shall we  ever command abroad
 the respect we should aspire to, until we learn, in the true im-
 port of the expression, to respect ourselves, and, by the change
 referred to,-become real Americans.
  One  consideration more, in  refutation  of the fancy, that
 racing improves the breed of horses. Fifteen or twenty years
 ago, before the love of  the turf had maddened  us, it  was in-
 finitely  easier to procure  fine  carriage  and saddle  horses in
 Kentucky, especially in  this portion of it, where the rage for
 running horses is highest, than it is at present.  This fact is af-
 firmed by our experienced dealers in horses for the  southern
market, whose difficulties in making up their droves  are  an-
 nually increased.  They find it  much  easier to supply  them-
selves in some  parts of Ohio, where  no running horses  are
reared, than here,  where there are so many.  Such, in Ken-
tucky, is the effect of breeding animals for the turf.  Our race
 of useful horses is deteriorated;  at least it is  reduced  in num-
 ber, which is virtually the same.
  In Virginia, where a greater number of fine running horses
 have been reared, than in all the other States  collectively,  the
 classes of useful horses are the  worst in the Union.  Compared
 to the same classes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York,
 and New England, their  appearance  is mean and miserable,
 and their qialities no better.  In Massachusetts  in particular,
 where a full-Ved racer has rarely  been seen, and never per-
 haps produced, \he horses are excellent.  So are they in Ver-
 mont.   Their blood is good, and they are excellently trained—
 but it is to useful pulses—the draft, the carriage, and  the
 saddle.   Such is the evince (and much more  might be  ad-
 duced) that  racing is neiti^r  necessary to the improvement
 of the blood  and breeding of horses, nor an  auxiliary  to it.
 On the contrary, that it has proved in this country unfavoura-
 ble to it, is the plain language  of erery  fact that bears on  the
 subject.   On the  score of public  economy,  therefore, apart
 from its immorality and encouragement of crime, it  should be 
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
43
 prohibited  by  law.   Yet was there  an  attempt made in
 Frankfort  last winter, by a citizen of this place, of a grave
 and  prvfessedly moral deportment, to  have the "Lexington
 Jockey Club" sanctioned by law, under the counterfeit heading
 of "An Act to  improve the breed of domestic animals!"   Much
 less disgraceful and injurious to us would it be, to have a law
 passed for the breeding of wolves and rattle-snakes  among us!
 Such monsters of blood and poison, would do less mischief, and
 could be much more easily guarded against than gamblers.
    It is idle  then to contend, that we cannot have  the very best
 blooded horses that the age produces, except through the sports
 of the turf.   To say that we will not have them on any other
 ground, is  a  view of the subject altogether different.  The
 failure in that case, should it occur, will be a matter of choicei
 not of necessity, and will evince, that, in the article of  horses,
 as of most other things, men expend their money more liber-
 ally with a view to superfluity and  show, than to substantial
 usefulness.    It will be but another instance in proof of the
 fact, that,  in every rank of society, fashion and mere  animal
 indulgence  predominate over reason and common sense.  To
 make the best of horse-racing, it is but a practice to gratify the
 propensities and perhaps  improve  the fortunes of the few, at
 the expense and to the manifest  injury of the many.  It ought
 to be abandoned, therefore, especially by men who  assume to
 be moral;  because morality enjoins, that the welfare  of the
 majority be always preferred.
   I shall  state a further  objection  to the practice  of  horse-
 racing, which ought to  be mortifying to its patrons- and advo-
 cates.  It gives to  too many of our gentlemen o( fashion and
 standing,  the train of thought, and the conversational habits of
 grooms and jockies. A counsellor at law, of professional destinc-
 tion and mental accomplishments, from a  distance, has recently
 said of some of the principal lawyers of this place, that their
 only mode of spending their leisure hours appeared  to him to
 be, in swallowing mint-slings, playing brag or poker, discuss-
ing party  politics, or detailing the pedigree and character of
horses!  To science and literature he pronounced them  stran- 
44               A DISCOURSE ON  GAMBLING.
gers!—a miserable compliment to the leading characters of the
"Athens of the  West!"—To  make  these  disclosures is  hu-
miliating and painful to me.   What then should be their effect
on  those whom they more  intimately and deeply concern!
Though such things are  repulsive to me, yet  I refer to them
much "more in sorrow, than  in anger."  Instead of being of-
fended with me, therefore, for making these statements, I trust
that the gentlemen  to whom  they apply will take  offence at
themselves,  refrain from  the  culpable  practices  involved in
them, and seek more refined and laudable amusements.
  On the  subject of gambling I have another  disclosure to
make, which I deem important.   I call it a "disclosure" and
such it will probably be to some, though a matter of broad no-
toriety to others.  Most, if not all of our public watering-places,
are detestable sinks of the vice of gambling.   For every physi-
cal malady they heal, they are calculated to engender and ag-
gravate scores of moral ones.  If my information be not de-
ceptive, their means of corruption and mischief are appalling.
Not only are they polluted by swarms of black-legs; gentle-
men gamblers resort to them in parties, to perpetrate there, by
cards and  otherwise, open  violations of morality and  law,
which a dread of prosecution, public odium, or  something else,
prevents them from doing at home.   This is a  scandal which,
should not be tolerated.  It is not only licentious; it  is mean
and dastardly, for  heads  of families to desert their dwellings,
to sculk at cards, in the secluded corners of watering-place
cabins!   That  men of standing should  thus  degrade  them-
selves, is truly amazing.   Nor is it less  so, that they should
do  it, and be allowed to retain their standing.    On such high
offenders the law should  be strictly executed; and the moral
sense of the community should force the  keepers of the dese-
crated  establishments to expel black-legs, and prevent gamb-
ling in them, or have them abandoned and thrown empty and
profitless on their hands.   Never should those who thus pan-
der to vice, be allowed to  grow  wealthy,  by  their nefarious
trade.  Stern measures enforced  against gambling will banish
it equally from all its haunts—from demoralizing watering-places,
as  promptly and certainly,  as from towns and cities. 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
45
  Shall I be told, in palliation of gaming  at watering places,
that time passes monotonously, and hangs heavily on the hands
of visitants, except they indulge in some form of amusement?
Be it so.  But is that  any reason why gentlemen should as-
semble there, for the express  purpose  of relieving the weight
and dulness of time by gambling,  as  they are  known to do?
Besides; what a foul and degrading imputation do  they  affix
on themselves—on their taste, their intellect, and their morals
—by the practical acknowledgment, that no other employment
sufficiently amuses them, save that of outraging morality and
law, by rifling each other's pockets!   Such is the vulgar and
lawless amusement of the Malays, Arabs, and Tartars, and
of other barbarous and predatory nations.  Where are music,
dancing, reading, walking, riding, admiring the beauties of na-
ture, and indulging in enlightened and sprightly conversation?
—where are amusements like these, compared  to which gam-
bling is the "fire-water" of  the savage, contrasted with the
choicest juices of the  grape!  Why are they not resorted to
by men who pretend  to civilization and refinement, in prefe-
rence to the coarse and vicious pastirrie of ignorance and bar-
barism?   The  answer is plain.  The reason is to be found in
the depraved taste  and vitiated morals of those addicted to
the revolting practice.  At a celebrated watering place, which
I could name (and for ought I know the same was true of many
or all  others)  such was the scandalous rage for gambling last
summer, that the ladies were often unable to attract from the
gaming tables  a sufficient  number of gentlemen to form two
or three cotillions!  Yet the  assemblage of visitants was unu-
sually large.  Such occurrences are  blots on human nature!
To say nothing of the vices that were practised; conduct so
wanting in courtesy and gallantry would disgrace,barbarians!
In a word, I do not hesitate  to  assert, that it  is the duty of
every  friend to morality and law, especially  of ladies, and
more especially still of wives and mothers, to withhold them-
selves, as from pest-houses—or  other houses of still deadlier
corruption—from all watering places where gambling  is toler-
ated.  Let a general  resolution to this  effect be formed, pro- 
46
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBWNO.
 claimed, and  carried into execution, and the vice at such
 places will soon  be extinguished.   As matters now stand, it
 were infinitely better that every mineral spring in the country
 were dried up, than that they should be the annual assembling
 points of gamblers and pickpockets!
   It was my intention to offer a few condemnatory remarks on
 another pernicious form of gambling, which is alarmingly fash-
 ionable in some parts of our country, and has brought ruin on
 thousands.  I  allude to  lotteries.  But I  shall dwell on that
 subject only long enough to say, that whatever may be the ob-
 ject for which money is thus raised—whether to build churches
 or college  edifices, or  to promote patriotic  or charitable pur-
 poses, the practice is incompatible with religion and morality,
 and should never be countenanced by  the votaries of either.
 It encourages  a spirit of adventure  in  games of hazard, and
 should be strictly prohibited by the  laws of the  country.   I
 could mention a signal  instance of destruction to fame, for-
 tune and domestic comfort, recently produced by it, in a fam-
 ily of high standing, in the city of Philadelphia.
   A word before I close, to those who assume to themselves the
 title of the religious community.  And  here I  shall propose to
 them a few  plain, and, as I earnestly  trust, unexceptionable
 questions.  In these, as well as in any remarks that may follow
 them, I  beg  to be considered as an inquirer and  suggester,
 rather than as a dictator, or an arbiter in matters where  con-
 science is concerned.
   1. Does not true religion consist in  a condition of feeling
 and a scheme of action, rather than in a  system of dogmas and
 doctrines ? and does not that action tend directly to social har-
 mony and public good?
   2. Are not the eradication of vice, and the  preservation  of
 the community from its contamination and consequences, two
 of the leading objects of religion?
   3. Can such eradication  be effected, without the use  of
human means adapted to the purpose, and skilfully applied?
   4. Does  not experience show, that associations, properly
regulated and wisely directed,  constitute one of the most effec- 
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
47
 tual means for the luppression of evil and the production of
 reform?
    5. Has not gambling gained a fearful foothold among us; and
 is it not  one of  the most  demoralizing and destructive of
 vices?
    6. Would not its extinction be an achievement favourable to
 Christianity, and praiseworthy in such of its professors as might
 contribute to it ?
    7. Are not the preservation from evil of our neighbours and
 friends immediately around  us, and their purification from the
 guilt that may attach to them, objects as desirable, and as dear
 to religion, as the conversion of  pagan communities at a dis-
 tance, or  the establishment  of schools and missions in foreign
 countries ?
    8. Has the religious community of Lexington lent its aid, to
 the extent of its power, towards the extirpation and preven-
 tion of gambling?
    9. On many of the children of  Lexington contributions are
 understood to be levied for the maintenance of schools in for-
 eign countries.   This may be well; but would it not be wiser
 and better, to appropriate that money to the procurement of
 tracts or essays against gambling, to be placed in the hands of
 children for daily perusal, that their minds may be early imbued
 with a becoming abhorrence of so destructive a practice?
    10. Would not such a  measure, besides being practically
 useful, be in laudable obedienee to the divine  precept, " Train
 up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will
 not depart from it"?
   That these are questions of serious import, will not be denied.
 Seriously therefore should they be weighed  and considered,
 each member of the religious community examining them  for
 himself.   To the first,  second, fourth,  fifth, sixth,  seventh,
 ninth, and tenth of them, the reply must be affirmative.  Most
 of them,  however,  are comparatively theoretical, and call but
 indirectly for action.  But the third  and eighth, which are
 purely practical, and may be  said to call for immediate action,
must be  answered in the negative*  In reply  to them, I say 
48
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
again, as I have already said, that gambling is one of the heav-
iest curses,  that can fall on a community; and  I further say,
that the  members  of the different religious  denominations in
this city  have not waged against it that open, determined, and
efficient warfare, which duty demands  of them,  and the crisis
requires.  I add, that, on this point, most of them have been
untrue to their calling as christians, and some of them to
their positive  promises as men.   Had their religion been  a
source of action rather than of words, of performance rather
than profession, their conduct would have been different.  They
would then have not only united, they would have led in active
measures against the evil, instead of contenting themselves
with heaping on it verbal condemnations.   True; they preach
against  it, pray against it, talk  against it, and refrain from it
themselves.   So far  they act correctly, but stop short of their
mark.  That this is not the way to extinguish it, is a truth as
familiar to them as to me.  Nor will they gravely pronounce it
so.  They must act against it through the medium  of public
sentiment and penal law, else their labours will be unavailing.
When an inveterate evil is to be beaten down,  mere words
without action  are useless instruments,  To trust to them  is
as fruitless, as to attempt to check the whirlwind by a breath
or a feather.   More solid and suitable  means must be employ-
ed, else nothing will be effected.   As  soon shall the agricultu-
rist pray and talk into existence a crop  of corn, without labour,
as a religionist pray and sermonize out of existence the sin  of
gambling, without acting on its authors.
   Am I  asked, What  then are the  members  of the religious
community to do, to compass with certainty the  object of their
wishes?   I answer, let them associate  themselves against gam-
bling, like a band of brothers, commence the conflict with res-
olution and vigour, and persevere without flinching, and victory
is secure.  Instead of their habitual warfare with each other,
let the different religious denominations unite  and  move in a
 body, to detect the gambler in his midnight lurking places,  to
 execute the laws inexorably against him, and to discountenance
 the practice  in every other way, and  the   work will  be 
A DISCOURSE ON 0AMBLING.
49
accomplished.  Let all, I say, who make a profession of religion
in this place, enrol themselves under the banner of a well-form-
ed and regulated anti-gambling association, and institute judi-
cious and energetic  proceedings against the  vice, and, in  a
short period, there will not be a pack of cards in the city of
Lexington.   And a more glorious  consummation in favour of
religion can hardly be imagined.  Card-playing will become as
odious, as it has been heretofore fashionable.   Such will be the
result the more certainly, as most  men of respectability, who
make no profession of religion, are  ready  to join them.  It
seems not a little singular, nor  is it in any measure creditable
to our fervid religionists, that they have been tardy and luke-
warm in their  actions against  gambling, and have permitted
those deemed wanting  in religion, to commence  the warfare,
and  lead  in  the onset.  It is  perfectly known to me,  that,
more than twelve months ago, many prominent members
of the  several religious denominations, in Lexington, were in-
vited and importuned, by a man not very highly distinguished
for his religion, to  form immediately an anti-gambling  society,
and institute rigorous measures against the  vice.   And it is
equally known to me that all of them approved of the project,
and  most of them promised to engage in it.  But there the
matter ended.  Like other lip-professions, the  promise evapo-
rated in  air; and the vice  was  unmolested, until fortunately
assailed from another quarter.    Instead of uniting in opposi-
tion  to gaming, as a common enemy, the sectarists persisted in
their opposition to each other, as if that cause were the dear-
er, holier,  and more useful.   There is much ground  to fear,
that  certain religious denominations cherish a more embittered
mutual hatred, and are ready to do more for the overthrow of
one another, than they would for the expulsion or reformation
of black-legs, and the extermination of their offences.  This
is unquestionably the case, if we may trust for evidence to the
columns  of some  of our theological newspapers.   They are
far more replete with sectarian  wrangling, rancour, and abuse,
than with matter condemnatory of the vice of gambling—or
perhaps of any other vice.  As far as their testimony  avails,
             7 
50
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
they sustain the charge, that the odium theologicum is the most
fierce and  inexorable of the human passions.   They clearly
evince,  that, by many sectarians, a mere difference in creed,
if not in forms of worship, and modes of church government,
is considered a deadlier sin, and is therefore more vehemently
hated and  inveighed against, than open irreligion, immorality,
or crime.
  But my  present concern  is not with creeds and abstract
opinions.   It is with that which more vitally interests society;
with what men should do, rather than with what they should be-
lieve or imagine. Might I, then, so far venture, without subjecting
myself to the charge of presumption, I would earnestly invoke
the various religious denominations to  forget  or  suspend, for
a season, their mutual rivalries, feuds and animosities, and unite
against gambling in a war of extermination.   In the true ac-
ceptation of the term, the alliance will  be holy.   The cause
is common and the stake mighty.  Common therefore be the
confederacy, and vigorous the attack! Nor let the effort cease,
until victory  is complete.   When a black-leg or a gentleman
gambler meets a youth, whom he wishes  to ensnare, he does
not ask for his religious creed.   It matters not  to him, whether
he be a Catholic,  a Jew, an Episcopalian, a  Presbyterian, a
 Baptist, a Methodist, or a Nothingarian.  His only object is
 to know whether he can allure him to play,  and rifle him of
 his means.  Against the common foe, then, I would again in-
 voke all religious denominations, and all other classes of the
 community, who venerate virtue and hold vice in abhorrence,
 to join in the warfare, and triumph is certain.   But if  they
  persevere in  their rancorous contests with one another, or,
  folding their arms, indulge in supineness, I tell them emphati-
  cally, that degradation and deep injury, if not ruin, await us.
    A few remarks more to the Members of the Medical Class
  generally, and I am done.
    The Professors of the Medical Department of  this Universi-
  ty, deem it a duty, while they count it a pleasure, to take a
  lively concern in the entire interests and welfare,  of  those
  who resort  to the institution for instruction.    In a special 
A DISCOURSE ON GAMBLING.
SI
 manner they feel it enjoined on them to watch over the mor-
 als and means of subsistence of young men, most of them in-
 experienced in the world, and not a few of  them, for the first
 time, removed  to  a distance from their parental homes, and
 from the guardianship of those, on  whom they have hereto-
 fore relied  for protection and counsel.   Under these circum-
 stances it was found, that, besides  being seriously injured in
 their habits, youths suffered occasionally heavy losses, by the
 nefarious arts and machinations of black-legs, but  much more
 frequently, and in a higher degree, by the allurements held out
 to them, and the frauds practised on them, by gentlemen Gamb-
 lers.   It was to guard against these evils, that the Anti-gamb-
 ling Society of Transylvania was  instituted.  Nor  has the
 measure been in vain.  As already stated to you, the influence
 of the Society has been salutary and gratifying,  to an extent
 that was  hardly anticipated by its founders.   The fell designs
 of gamesters were defeated, their hopes of fraudulent gain dis-
 appointed,  and gambling among the pupils  was entirely pre-
 vented.   The beneficial  effects of these results,  now and in
 after times, to individuals, families, and society  at large, neither
 language  can recount, nor numbers  compute.  The) are in-
 calculable and inexpressible.   They may be  felt for ages to
 come, as preventives of crime, and prove instrumental in avert-
 ing sorrow, suffering, and ruin, from unborn miWons.
   A very large proportion of the Medical Class of last win-
 ter became members of the Society;  and k is earnestly  re-
 commended, that  the present class  do tte  same.   Nor is a
 doubt entertained, that the recommendation will be complied
 with.   To become  a  member  of tlv Society costs nothing,
 and may  save much.    Though  no pupil will be censured for
 withholding himself from the institution; yet  to join  it  will
 be regarded as a  a commendatory  act.   Of one truth im-
 portant to you, be confidently  assured.  Gambling is an ut-
 ter disqualification for a Medical degree  in Transylvania Uni-
 versity.   No one known to be concerned in the vice will ever
 wear the  honours  of this Department.   They must wave only
over the brow of honesty and virtue, talent and science.   And
the gaming table tends to the ruin of  them all.   To conclude: 
52
A DISCOURSE  ON GAMBLING.
  In the form and spirit of a corollary from the premises laid
down, I close with the declaration, that, whenever, wherever,
and  by whomsoever  practised—whether in  private families,
public hotels, watering-place cabins, or other  places of rende-
vous deeper in  infamy—and whether by black-legs, heads  of
families, or "gentlemen of the sport"—under all circumstances
that accident can furnish, or fancy concieve,  gambling is  kna-
very !—and therefore a badge  of immorality, dishonour, and
crime! 
APPENDIX:   A.
    I am fully aware  of  the opposition  I shall  be likely  to encounter,
  fcharpened perhups by a spirit of censure, on account of my advocation of the
  measures adopted to quell the recent conspiracy in the State of Mississippi.
  As long, however, as my present views shall continue, no consideration of the
  kind can move me from my course, or make.me faulter in the pursuit of it.  I
  believe that in the then existing state of things, the people of Mississippi could
 not have found certain safety  in the  slow operation of the laws  of the land
  Such  unquestionably was their own opinion.  And  I know of no obligation
 they were under to jeopard the lives and fortunes of thousands of the virtuous,
 innocent and industrious, from a regard to what may be miscalled the rights and
 privileges of a band of idle, predatory, and blood-thirsty ruffians, who, by an
 unbroken tenor of profligacy  and crime, had already forfeited their rights, in
 common with  their claims on human  sympathy; and who were  prepared to
 embark in  a new scene of guilt and horror,  far surpassing  all the atrocities
 they had previously committed.  Under such circumstances, I further believe,
 that the people were fully justified in  obeying the impulse of self-defence,  and
 in destroying the guilty,  as by far the best, if not the only means of protecting
 the innocent—of preventing conflagration and blood, the violation of females,
 and the final triumph of all the  base and malignant  passions, and of securing
 the  peace and tranquility of the State.  In the consideration and solution of
 this vexed and agitating question, three points are to be specially held in view—
 that the danger apprehended was real—that the usual operation of law was too
 slow, or too feeble,  or both, to meet the crisis—and that the persons arrested
 and executed were guilty of the crimes alleged against them.   Were the Mis-
 lissippians immediately  concerned in the matter, entirely satisfied on  these
 three points?   They were.  Not a doubt existed in their minds with regard to
 either of them.  They did nothing  from motives of barbarity, or an abstract
 love of blood.  No suspicion of the kind can attach to the individuals who
 were engaged  in  the proceedings.   By the  law of self-defence, therefore, I
 say, they were perfectly justified in the measures they adopted.   An opinion
 the opposite of this would lay  good men at the mercy of the spoiler and the
 murderer.   At least, all sufficient preventive means would be neglected through
its influence, and  the  bursting of the  storm, which might have been easily
averted, would be awaited in apathy and comparative inaction.   But the dif-
ference between the prevention of an evil, and the arresting of it when already
in motion, is too well known to need exposition.   The one is usually easy, the
other always difficult—often impossible.  Even admitting the possibility that
the people of Mississippi were mistaken in some of their views, still were they 
54
APPENDIX.
justified in their conduct; because they acted under  a conviction that their
information  was correct,  and their fears" well founded.  And it will hard"
ly be questioned that, from their full knowledge of facts and circumstances,
they were the most competent judges—certainly  much more competent, than
peisons at a distance, entirely ignorant of things as  they existed.   In truth,
they were the only qualified judges in the case; and to have referred to others
their right to judge and decide, would have been  folly in them.   At least it
would have been palpable injustice to themselves.
  It may be accounted one of the peculiar characteristics of the time we live
in, that a wider and deeper sensation is often produced in the public mind, by
the violent death of a few felons, than by that of threefold the  number of hon-
est and  virtuous men.  In the late disturbances in  the State of Mississippi,
about eight or ten black-legs, horse-thieves, and robbers met the cord, without
being condemned to it by a fashionable  process of law.  They  were not,  I
mean, regularly arraigned in courts of justice, where bribed and conscienceless
lawyers  might make unprincipled efforts, through the trickery of their profes-
sion, to procure their acquittal,  and let  them loose on society Again, to con-
tinue their career of guilt, under fairer prospects and higher  encouragement.
No; from a thorough conviction, on the part of those  most competentto judge,
that their further enjoyment of life was  wholly  incompatible  with the welfare
of society,    they  were   brought promptly   to justice, and  suffered the
death they had long deserved.  Yet  I repeat, that the fate  of those culprits
has produced,in the United States, a deeper sensation, and a more intemperate
disapproval, than would the assassination by them of Ihrrcfold their numher of
orderly, honest, and useful citizens have done.  In  proof of  tl  is, we may con-
fidently  cite the massacre perpetrated a few years  ago, by rebellions slaves, in
 the state of Virginia.  The number butchered on  that occasion, a large pro-
 portion  of them being women and children, amounted, I think, to upwards of
fifty.  Yet the excitement ann clamour produced  by the catastrophe were far
 infesior  to the uproar that has prevailed, on account of the few executions in
 Mississippi.   The Virginia massacre, after having been the subject of attention
 for a few weeks, was suffered to repose in silence  and  oblivion. But declama-
 tion on tha  Mississippi executions would seem  to be endless.  Yet  no one will
 contend, that the violation of law in the latter case was more  palpable than in
 the former;  while the violence  done to justice and  humanity  was infinitely
 les*.  Indeed, it has never, I believe, been alleged, that, in  the death  of the
  Mississippi felons, either justice  or humanity wasviohted at all.   On the con-
  trary, it has  been universally acknowledged that  the offenders deserved to die.
  The mode of their death has alone been complained of.  They did not receive
  a technical trial.  A jury of twelve men did not pronounce  them guilty—and
  they did not die by a commissioned hangman!   No;  but more than twelve times
  twelve thousand men did so pronounce them. In fact,  every one acquainted with
  their characters and crimes pronounced them guilty-and they  suffered under the
  tu\nds of those they would have assassinated.   Hence they died justly, though
  not accarding to art and usage.  The form only is condemned, while the sub-
  •tanco it approved.  But, in the case of the Virginia massacre, form and sub- 
APPENDIX.
55
stance were alike atrocious.   Why, then, is the latter outrage suffered to sleep
and be forgotten, while the former is bruited, commented on, and condemned,
throughout so large a portion of our country ?  Well might it be said, in  the
words of the dramatist, that "there is something more than natural in this, if
our philosophy could find it out".
   We are  told, indeed, that the proceedings in Mississippi are of bad example,
and should therefore have been avoided.  I deny the charge. Under similar cir-
cumstances, the example would be salutary, and ought to be followed.  It is the
abuse or perversion of it that can prove injurious.  It is where violence is done
to person or life,  in dissimilar cases, where no  plea  of necessity or even utility
exists, that the example is bad, and  its effects pernicious.  Should another in-
surrection  of slaves be impending, originally hatched and fomented by white
men, and to  be led and consummated by them, when mature—in such a case
the leaders should be consigned in a similar manner to a similar fate,  that the
conspiracy might be the more certainly crushed,  and its  havock prevented.
This, however, offers no plea for mobs and lawless  violence, in other parts  of
our country, where no danger  or necessity exists, to justify  such measures.
Because a  few villanis, whose existence threatened the well-being of the state
were unceremoniously executed in  Mississippi, that affords no reason, why
peace and  order  should be violated,  property wasted, and life endangered and
destroyed, by mobs and riots, in various parts of the country, where no plea  of
necessity or usefulness exists. From  such a source, nothing but sophistry, folly,
or sinister design  would contend that a product so different could issue—a pro-
duct the very reverse of its cause.  Because an assemblage of enlightened and
orderly, industrious and peaceable men  put to death, without the usual for-
malities of law, a few  notorious malefactors, rather than suffer their -property
to be wasted, their own lives and those of their families endangered or destroy-
ed, and the  peace and the well-beinj: of the community subverted—because
they thus defend  themselves  and others from violence and pillage, their proceed-
ing furnishes no  good  reason, why,  without any motive, of either danger to
themselves, or usefulness  to others,  a band  of ruffians  should engage in the
wanton depredations and outrages of a mob.   Vet such would  seem to be the
perverted logic of those who condemn the Mississippi executions.
   Although the comparison has been made, there is no similarity between the
proceedings in Mississippi,  and the mob-work in  the cities of the  east and
north.  With no justice, therefore, I say, can the former be said to  give either
example or encouragement  to the latter.  The intention  of  the  Mississippi
measures was to preserve peace, property and valuable life; that of the eastern
and northern riots, to endanger and destroy them.   Nor was there any thing  in
Mississippi that could be denominated a mob.  'I hat means a  riotous assem-
blage of low  and reckless ruffians, whose object is to insult and injure those
who move in a higher sphere, and enjoy a better condition in society.  But the
assemblages in Mississippi were every where those of the intelligent, moral, and
wealthy inhabitants, who had much  of reputation and fortune at stake, in ar-
ray against the profligate and degraded, who were beggars in both; and whose
parpose it was to  acquire property and destroy life, in defiance alike of the law 
56
APPENDIX.
 of earth, and the ordinances of Heaven.  I confidently repeat, therefore, that
 they furnish neither type, example,  nor countenance to the mobs and riots of
 the Atlantic cities.  A charge of the kind against  them is groundless and un-
 warrantable, and can  proceed  only, as already mentioned, from ignorance,
 thoughtlessness, or evil design.
   The executions in Mississippi most generally and  deeply condemned, were
 those of Vicksburg. Yet that they were justifiable may be easily made appear.
 The culprits who suffered had long been a scandal to  the place, and a curse to
 the inhabitants.  They had  made  beggars  first,  and gamblers afterwards of
 many respectable and promising young men—and had  reduced whole families
 to indigence  and agony.  They belonged, moreover-  as was confidently be-
 lieved, to the blood-thirsty gang, that had conspired  with rebellious slaves, to
 desolate the country.   Being ordered,  on these grounds, to leave  Vicksburg,
 and prey on the inhabitants no longer, they contumaciously refused, took pos-
 session of a house, which they held as a fortress, and bade defiance  to the au-
 thorities of the  town.   They were  five in number.'  In an attempt  madeby
 the citizens to dislodge or apprehend them, they murdered Dr. Bodley, a young
 man rising rapidly to eminence in his profession, distinguished for his personal
 prowess and decision, respected for his high moral standing, and endeared to his
 fellow citizens by the warm and generous qualities of the friend and philan-
 thropist, and the courteous and polished manners of the gentleman.   The
 door of the stroug-hold was forced, and in entering it, the Doctor fell, pierced
 in the chest with seven bullets, from which it appeared sufficiently plain, that
 each offender in the house had fired, and was justly considered guilty of murder.
 In this state of things, had the assembled citizens returned  the fire with such
 effect as to shoot dead the whole banditti, no censure would  have been  passed
 on them, on account of the deed.  Instead of this, they broke through the de-
 fences of the assassins and made them prisoners; and, while their hands were
 yet stained with the blood of their victim, consigned them to a more appropri-
 ate, because a more ignominious death.  This summary act,  with a few others
 somewhat similar, which  soon afterwards  followed, in other places, did more
 to quell  the meditated insurrection, and  dissipate the danger which hung over
 the State, than scores  or even hundreds of judicial  trials'would  have done.
 The conspirators were promptly  driven from  the country,  and  the people
 reposed  in security and  peace.  Nor were the measures productive of any form
 of mischief or inconvenience.   No  tumult  or  disorder (followed  them.  Far
 from it.   In truth they were calculated to discourage and prevent all forms of
 popular outrage, by clearly demonstrating that they would not be tolerated.
 At the first appearance of the late Baltimore riots, a similar degree of energy
 and decision,  by the friends of order, would have saved that city from  pillage
 and disgrace.  And the same is true of the mobs in Philadelphia, New York,
 Charlestown, and elsewhere in the east.   A few examples of the leading rioters
 promptly made, would have dispersed the remainder and restored tranquility.
  Respecting the executions that took place  in all other  parts of Mississippi,
except Vicksburg, they were  conducted conformably to the slave-laws of the
State. But it will not be  contended (assuredly it ought not) that the white conspi- 
APPENDIX.                            57
 rators had any claim to be distinguished from the black— except by a more 6lcrn
 and ignominious punishment.  They  were infinitely the more  base in their
 motives,  and the  more criminal  in  their designs.  They were consequently
 more  degraded.   The blacks were actuated by a  longing after  freedom—a
 sentiment for which some excuse may be found—in our feelings at least, if not
 in our judgment.   But the whites were urged on by  lust, a spirit of rapine,
 and a thirst for blood—the most atrocious of the human passions.  In all but
 colour and form, they had assimilated themselves to the slaves, and had sunk-
 far below them in baseness and crime.  In justice, therefore, as well as in con-
 science, they had  forfeited  all the  privileges  of freemen.  Instigators of a
 servile war, and destined to be chiefs in it, they deserved to be tried  and exe-
 cuted by the same laws with the slaves they were to'lead—or even by severer
 ones, had any such existed.   Voluntary associates in  guilt,  it was with strict
 propriety  that the black and white conspirators were made  associates also in
 their forms of trial, as well as in their execution.  It was justice, to convict
 them by the same  process, suspend them to the same limb, and bury them in
 the same dishonored grave.
   Shall I again  be told, as I already have been, that no injury could have re-
 sulted to the Mississippians,  from the brief delay of subjecting the culprits to
 a formal trial in courts of justice?  I reply, that this is, at best, but a begging
 of the question.  It is a mere conjecture, and cannot be advanced as a fact, or a
 ground of argument, by those who mean to argue fairly.  It is not only weight-
 less—it is inadmissible in the discussion.  Who were best qualified to judge,
 whether injury might result from  the "law's  delay"?—the Mississippians on
 the spot, fully apprized of all the facts and  circumstances of the case?—or
 the citizens of other and distant States, entirely ignorant of them?  These
 questions answer themselves.   None but the Mississippians were competent  to
 decide in a matter so momentous to them, and understood only by themselves.
 They believed that the danger which threatened them could be met and avert-
 ed by  no other means than those  they resorted to.  And, until their fellow
 citizens at a distance can prove the contrary, it becomes them to be silent, or
 withhold their censures.   It cannot be denied in reason or justice, that those
 who found themselves in the midst of danger, from no fault of their own, were
 perfectly justifiable in adopting such measures and means of defence and safe-
 ty, as they conscientiously believed were alone sufficient.
   Admit  that the  subsequent disclosures had convinced, or should hereafter
 convince the inhabitants of Mississippi, that they might have awaited in safety
judicial proceedings, instead of acting with such promptness and severity. Even
 that would not justly convict them of a. fault. It would only show that they had
 erred in judgment.  In the measures they adopted, they were sincere and honest.
 Their design was humane and virtuous.  No abstract desire of blood, I repeat,
 had possession of them.  On the contrary, their aim was to prevent the effu-
 sion of blood, by the punishment and defeat of those who were plotting it.
 They had detected traitors in the camp, in the guise of friends.   They were
 entirely justifiable, therefore, in treating them as traitors. A "drum-head" trial
 wa« all they deieryed.
                     8 
58
APPENDIX.
   I am aware that these sentiments will be  likely to bring down on me the
fashionable cry of "mob-law"!   But I am equally aware,  that  fashion and"
folly are often identical.  Nor would it be easy to persuade me, that the pre*-
serft case furnishes an exception to the rule.
   Did  an assemblage of the  talents and wisdom, virrot  and' good  order of
Vicksburg, calmly executing  a  gang of murderers, constitute a  "mob"?  or
could that term of reproach be justly applied  to a collection of the most re-
spectable citizens  of Nashville, deliberately punishing a reckless abolitionist,
for endeavouring to  excite an insurrection among their slaves—a measure, by
which  they meant to save his life, and did save it, from the vengeance of a
wronged and'justly  indignant people?  It would  hardly have  beerr safe for
their boldest condemner, to have entered either of those assemblies, and1 pro-
nounced  it a  "mob."  In truth, neither of them bore anymore resemblance to
the mobs that disgrace some other parts of our country, than virtue bears to
vice, good  order to riot, or a confederacy to preserve life and  property to a con-
federacy to destroy them.   Therr object was to. prevent  mobs; and'they pro-
duced  the   effect.   The  mob-scenes  that   have since  occurred',  I  say?
bore no likeness to them, in either character, intent, or action. The inference,
therefore, that they have been produced, or in any way influenced by them, is
unreasonable and groundless—not to use a stronger term, and call it absurd.
   The Mississippians are, to the full amount,  as humane and moral, merciful
and- conscientious, as those who condemn them. In the measures they adopted;,
they meditated neither illegal nor immoral deeds.   Tlieir design was to punish
the guilty, and save the innocent, in the only certain way that presented  itself;
And they were  successful.   The  wretches whom  they  punished were guilty,
anddeserved death—a truth-which no  one has had the hardihood' to  deny.
And.the  issue was, peace, security,  and relief of mind, to a deeply alarmed
and distracted community.  I have ventured,  therefore, to become their  advo-
cate,  notwithstanding the legal quibbles,  the nice distinctions  and special
pleadings, and the scruples of morbidly tender consciences, that have been ar-
rayed against them.  Nor  do I  shrink  from the judgment of an enlightened
public in aught I have already said, or in confidently  adding, that, when the
law of the land is insufficient to protect us, we must look into our own nature,
the work of a wise and beneficent  Creatoh, take counsel there, and'become
a law to  ourselves.   In such a case, moreover, we must judge for oursthes, and
not. submit to the judgment of the uninformed.
   That many, if not most gentlemen of the bar will differ from me in the sen-
timents here set forth, is scarcely to be doubted.  Kor is it difficult to assign
some reasons for such difference.  Bred,  as they are, to view every  thing  be-
longing to  the economy of civil life  with a legal eye, and to'think of it  under
legal habits and influences, it is not wonderful'in them to believe that no felon
should, in any case, die but by the law.  The wonder perhaps would be, that
they should think otherwise.  Their feelings are professional,  and their thoughts
professional;  they are trained^ therefore, to believe, that the trial and execution
of all capital offenders shouldhe professional, and according to precedent and
art.  Precedent is their cynosure, from which they rarely deviate, and  deem 
APPENDIX.
59?
it little less than sinful to do so.  Were I to add, that they have a pecuniary in-
terest in professional and regular trials, and wish them always to  prevail, be-
cause of that interest, (for they subsist by it), I  would only express my belief,
that they are human beings, possessed of like propensities with  other men.
Nor do  I mean this remark as either disrespectful or condemnatory toward
them.  All professional men are technical, and  savour of their profession.  Of
lawyers this is  as true as of others.   They  see things through a  law medium,
which communicates  to them a law cast, colour, and character. Their strong-
hold is logic and law.   In these they may  be often advantageously consulted
and suffered to direct.   But not altogether so, in matters of expediency,general
fitness, and common sense.  For them, their minds are seldom sufficiently un-
trammelled and liberalized.  In such concerns,  educated, enlightened, and
practical men, who are not prefessional, are usually  the  soundest judges, and
the safest guides.  And of this description were the men, who chiefly direct-
ed and led  in the Mississippi arrests and trials, decisions and  executions.
And to their judgment, on such an occasion, it is safer I say to trust, than to
the judgment of lawyers.  In a word, the state of Mississippi was so near the
brink of a servile war,  that, until the danger was  past, she was clearly justifi-
able in acting on the maxim, ilinter arma silent  leges".
   Finally; gentlemen of the bar  are like  other professional and  technical
 characters: most  of them have two consciences  and two judgments, one as
 lawyers, the other as men; ancl they can use either, as circumstances require.
 On the late dangerous conjuncture in Mississippi, most, if not all of them, that
 were on the spot and apprized of the danger, are understood to have laid aside
their law judgments and  consciences, or to have  made  them submit to their
judgments and consciences as men, and to have  approved  of the  measures of
safety pursued. Nor do I know that they  have  since revoked their decisions.
I believe they have not.  Had  lawyers belonging toother States, and other
men of tender consciences,  who have so loudly complained, and so deeply
condemned, been  in Mississippi,at the time, they would  have done the same.
Had  even the venerable Judge Marshall been ali\e, and  a resident of that
State, I conscientiously  believe he would have concurred in the proceedings.
His great mind would have mastered his law prejudices, and made  them yield
to necessity and common sense.   Such a step would  have been worthy of him.