GAMBLING, or GAMING, the practice of playing for a money stake, games depending solely on chance, like roulette, for instance, or those other games into which the element of skill enters, as in the cases of whist or billiards. Strictly speaking, gambling may be understood as gaming in its worst sense and as implying professional play for a money stake by men who are unscrupulous adepts at so-called games of chance. Gambling has been common among most nations, civilized and uncivilized. The practice of civilized communities in regard to these acts has been far from uniform. The odium of gambling has sometimes been attached to games perfectly innocent in themselves and these games have been prohibited to the mani fest prejudice of the law, which has thus been brought into dishonor and contempt. At other times, governments, tempted by the facilities of sharing in the dishonest gain, have openly and shamelessly encouraged gambling by li censing gaming-houses, or instituting lotteries under their own authority. See LorrEay.
Gambling in In England gam bling was early made the subject of penal enactments. Statutory restrictions upon games and gaming go back as far as Richard II. In France, public gaming-tables were suppressed from 1 Jan. 1838. Previous to the formation of the new German Empire gambling was en couraged by official countenance in several of the principalities of Germany. Baden-Baden, a watering-place in the grand-duchy of Baden, and Homburg, then in the landgravate of Hesse Homburg, were until comparatively recent times the two most famous resorts in Europe of the frequenters of gaming-tables. Since the sup pression of gambling in these places, after the formation of the Empire (31 Dec. 1872), the principally of Monaco in Italy has become the last public resort of this species of grambling in Europe.
Repression of Gambling in the United In the United States the keeping of a gambling-house is indictable at common law as injurious to morals; and most States and Terri tories have passed laws against gambling, some of them severe and stringent. Yet till 1880
gambling was common and open in many parts of the United States; and it was left largely to societies for the suppression of vice, especially in New York, to stir up the authorities to put the laws in force. In 1881-84 prosecutions and convictions were very numerous; in 1835 almost all the chief cities in the Union followed the example of New York and since that time the progress of legislation on this subject has been noteworthy in many of the States. Always there is difficulty in legally defining gambling and distinguishing in judicial practice between acts which violate the gambling laws and those which, while presenting some questionable ap pearances, r.re yet not obviously to be classed in the same category. As in so many other matters of public policy, there is also a loss of power to the regulative sentiment of the people through want of uniformity or any consider able degree of identity among the laws of various States and sections. Therefore it is scarcely strange that, in spite of all prohibitive legislation and repressive influences brought to bear by public opinion, gambling should, either through connivance of the authorities or by secrecy and evasion, continue to be practised in many of the large cities of the United States. As in all other matters of public interest, the moral sentiment of the community steadily seeks and no doubt gradually finds a control ling expression through its official representa tives in the legislative field and in local and general administration. Consult Coldridge and Hawksford,