Canon oF Manogester, Cuapiain To H.M. rae Kixe.
The Commission uppointed by the Government to consider the advisability of putting a tax on betting is expected to bring out its report ners month. With so much legislation dropped, it seems probable that the question of a betting tar will be kept te the fore by its adherents.
Two difficulties confront one when trying to treat the subject of gambling in England to-day, and the proposal of the Government to tax betting. The first is the immensity of the topic, which calls for a bulky volume if the matter is to be treated adequately. And the second is the almost total ignorance of the ordinary middle-class man as to the nature and extent of the evil. As it would be impossible, even in an article many times the length of this one, to adduce one hundredth part of the evidence in my possession—and to produce only a small portion of that evidence would give a false impression—I shal] content myself with making some genera] statements, which anyone who is interested can verify for himself, and which have stood the test of a three-hours cross-examination -when 1 appeared, last July, before the Parliamentary Committee appointed,''To consider the question of imposing a duty on beta dat ting, and to report whether such is desirable and practicable," and of correspondence in many newspapers, and have never been shaken in the smallest detail. I can then go on to dis-cess the moral and economic arguments against taxing betting.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.