JB/015/411/001

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89

Upon gaming – self-regarding prudence lays its interdict.
Benevolence is not the less peremptory in insisting on the
immorality of this so dearly-purchased pleasure. The
public opinion tribunal has stigmatized the practice with
sufficient disgrace to hold a considerable check upon the
gaming propensity, – and the to society its Legislation has at different
times & in different ways interfered to bring the offence into
the field of penal judicature. Its consequences too have
been frequently followed into all their ramifications of
misery, personal domestic & social by the pens & pencils of authors & artists. But there is a consideration
and of one of mere prudential calculation which
seems to have escaped observation – or at all events has
not had any popular currency.

V
Gaming.

I don't know whether it Has it ever been
who plays upon equal terms plays to a disadvantage? Though the stake, skill
and chance be entirely equal, a man loses more than he could have gained.
Suppose the stake £20. on each side. If he loses, he loses 20. If he wins, he
wins £20. and no more. Now £20. lost, is more on the side of pain, than
£20. won, can be on the side of pleasure. A man can better bear to be without
£20. added to what he has already, than to be without £20. out of that which
he has, so that, in fact, either person is sure to lose more than the other gains.

In order for the one to gain as much as the other loses (or I should rather
say, for the one to lose no more than the other gains, the sum at stake should be
a sum that had belonged to neither of them before.

Identifier: | JB/015/411/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 15.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	015	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	411	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f89
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	[[watermarks::j whatman turkey mill 1824; [partial britannia motif]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer	jonathan blenman
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1824
Notes public		ID Number	5627
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