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In 1881
I was President of the Transvaal Independent Commmittee, which
did much to prevent, at the time, a war between this country
and the South African Republic. John Bright one day said to
me: "You do what you can outside, and I will do what I
can inside the Cabinet, to prevent a war. About twenty years
after, I was elected President of the Transvaal Committee, which
endeavoured, in the first place, to prevent such a war, and,
failing to do so, to mitigate the miseries and shorten the duration
of the war waged. |
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war, on account of the comparative insignificance of its causes, the
prodigious inequality of the combatants, with thousands of men and
money on the one side, and as many millions of men and money on the
other side; and in consequence of the boundless losses, sufferings,
devastations, and anxieties produced, will remain a lasting monument
of human error. |
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Lord Rosebery became Prime Minister in 1894, he resigned the presidentship
of the London Reform Union, and I was appointed his successor. The
Union has done, and continues to do, conspicuous service in the interests
of progressive municipal London. It has largely assisted to vitalise
and direct collective action on Liberal lines, and to encourage and
strengthen the London County Council to make London cleaner, brighter,
healthier, and more prosperous. I was also President, for two or three
years, of the Anti-Gambling League. Nothing is more certain, and few
things more regrettable, than the increase of gambling in our midst.
It is seen and felt in most kinds of sport. -in the stable-yard, on
the racecourse, in the maneuvering conflicts between bulls and bears
on 'Change, in schools, in streets, in the homes of the poor, and
at after-dinner card-parties in the homes of the rich and well-to-do;
and, wherever seen or felt, it morally enfeebles its votaries, whether
they be "bookmakers," financial company-promoters, peers,
or schoolboys. The gambler is not particular the quality of his means
to secure his ends. He is ever ready to "make the worse appear
the better reason," and to reduce deception to a fine art. The
gambler's progress will have to be checked, or he will check the progress
of civilisation. Many years before I parted with the Echo I decided
to sweep betting news out of its columns. I did so in the full expectation
that I should thereby sacrifice a portion of its circulation; and
so I did of its first midday edition. But what I lost in one way I
gained, if not more than gained, in other ways. Soon after I found
that the other and bigger editions sold more rather than less in consequence
of the change. The change, in fact, raised the character of the paper
and conciliated more than it alienated. In similar circumstances I
should now, from commercial as well as moral motives, imitate my own
example. |
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