THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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[Décembər 24, 1908.
taxes," although similar schemes in North SHIBUSAWA is reported as recommending | Churches, a friend to the education of the poor, Carolina and Kentucky were vetoed by the en artificial contraction of the currency to
CR e courager of Savings Banks, and—a State. California will pursue similar tactics check these enterprises, which seems to be supporter of lotteries". if it be not defeated at the outset in its the mistake of some journalist. Unless h
We have inserted italics that will campaign of prejudice against the Japanese. desired to basten the fulfilment of his own appear irrelevant, until we quote an It may be as expedient in America to dia- pessimistic forecast, and to engineer the example of the "avidence " which courage negro politics and Asiatic immigra-reaction and panic he fears, he would not be 'proved" the immorality of lotteries. One tion as it is in England to refuse women's likely to advocate such a step. But in the £100. Previously he had been industrious and 'case reported was that of a workman who won suffrage; but expedience can claim little comments coming under our notice, it is outside sympathy so long as it also prates possible there has been some confusion of of the money caused him to fall into habits of an excellent member of his class, but the receipt of equality and justice. In Ainetica it is
idleness, the peice of the family was destroyed, irritating to hear that "all men are created
and the man became a vagrant,' equal," and in Britain just now phrase no taxation without representa- tion seems to smell equally of humbug, or moral garlic.
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FINANCE IN JAPAN.
the
(Daily Press, 20th December.) There are various reports as to the prosent financial situation in Japan, and they contradict each other a good deal. Some appear to have originated in ober-
vations of the remarkable revival of
of
issues.
JAPAN AND LOTTERIES.
(Daily Press, 21st December.) A brief news item among our paragraphs in this issue calls attention to an act of the Japanese Government which is reprehended with some show of reason, The first achieved what was expected of it, a second Formosan lottery having successfully is already aunounced; and although its abolition is being strongly advocated—the Japanese auti-gambling law is still in force.
of the humbug of the age. This we may cite us another example
have
No one
that
the
no
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Renders may wonder that effect upon such a character would be caused by the discovery that his savings in the bank had reached a total of £100, as we read it was caused him to deteriorata. merely "the receipt of the money that "It came up a blank at last", said another witness whose is faithfully preserved to this day, "and I verily believe the disappoint-
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evideuce
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ment was the cause of his death We need not waste further space on such Parliamentary Committee of that day that arguments, arguments that convinced the lotteries were "radically vicious"; and that The point is that the British people, who presumably led to their abolition in 1826.
should have had this vice eradicated once
to gamble ever since, in different ways, and for all by 6 Geo. IV. c. 60, have continued have bad the example of their rulers and continued to die of disappointment, and legislators to encourage them. People bave thousands of men who have obtained capital have made the mistake of falling into idleness and vagrancy, like our foolish workman with the hundred sterling. But once the British Parliament is persuaded that rest under the imputation of hypocrisy than immoral for all time. They would rather a thing is immoral that thing is
admit that they had too hastily accepted a premiss. Such are the dilemmas into which the self-appointed guardians of the national legislators, and it does seem a little harsh morality are constantly thrusting our that they should be the first to accuse the lawmakers of hypocrisy when grimi necessity makes them how in the House of Rimon. There has been a good deal of that sort of
speculation since the war, which was only to be expected. While some critics warn us that Japau is approaching the verge bankruptcy-an apparently foolish and groundless prophecy-others declare that the inflation of prices is to be attributed to a superabundance of capital. appears ample evidence that money is far There from being tight", notwithstanding the number of new enterprises and extensions to existing works that have been started since peace was restored. After such a costly war, the money market might not unnaturally have been expected to become stringent, and the reverse condition can only be explained by the sudden and decided enhancement of Japan's cre it, and its consequent attraction for capitalists. Baron SHIBUSAWA considers that the promotion of new undertakings has gone too far; it has, he says, reached a fever pitch; and there is no saying where it will stop. It is hardly likely to stop while the banks have such a plethora of idle capital, and stringency does not appear to be so immediately threatening as the BARON supposes it to be, in which case we attach little importance to his fear of a reaction and consequent slump and panic. It would seem idle to suggest that the Japanese learned nothing from the lessons of the times following the war with being put on a level with thirst and other position to be in. Japan, with its eclectic
China; but apart from that, we prefer the opinions of the bank lirector, Mr. IKEDA, to those even of an an expert like Barou SHIBUSAWA, especially if, as we are inclined to suspect, the latter has been misreported. Mr. IKEDA does not regard the thousand million yen sunk in undertakings as excessive, because such a large percentage of them are productive The encouragement and extension of her. manufacturing industries is desirable, if only to offset the indebtedness of the courtry to the outside world.
new
It means, in other words, an increase of assets keeping pace with increased liabilities. Baron SHIBUSAWA is reported to have said that a reaction will undoubtedly set in when the country's finance begins to be contracted, but the point is in the "when", and he declined to commit himself apparently to any suggestion that such contraction was near enough to
be dated. Even of the thous ud mullion
yen referred to, only about twenty-five per cent of it is actually being employed at present. Economic conditions have changed for the better in the last ten years, and what Baron SHIBUBAWA calls the "company mania" of to-day appears to be a mach more sane and business like procedure than was the epidemic of bubble flotation prompted by the Chinese indemnity. Baron
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will deny, we suppose, that either this official lottery is wrong, or is certainly wrong to maintain both together. anti-gambling ordinance 18 wrong. It Moreover, while the government of Britain, lotteries, it does not require a laborious and of its dependency Hongkong, taboos survey to discover that Japan has monopoly of this fort of humbug. The legislators of that type whose ambition is always to abolish things have succeeded in establishing laws, but they seem always to conspicuously failed to get them for the inevitable reaction against inoperative enforced with the desired results. The time and oppres-ive legislation is not yet, and we take it all present denunciations of them will he mere ploughings in sand, but if we were called upon to advise Japan which of the two things she should abolish, we would mention the law before the lottery. This may sound shocking, but it seem logical. A hundred had conclusively proved, as the result of a years ago pious British people thought they Commission, that state lotteries involved and inherent instine's have been declared many social evils. So many of our natural immoral by these people that patiently tolerate the gambling instinct
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kowtowing at Shanghai and Hongkong. is pained by the moral downfall of the coolie | where the white man loves to gamble, but
we can who copies him; and it is not a dignified
much contemned animal desires. In passing, explain that gambling is an instinct, being to forestall possible ohj ctions, we may
harlarism's hunting spirit. Doubtless it is accounted civilization's modification of immoral; Nature's ways are
nas! V to a nice mind, and far from altruistic; and commonsens⚫ tenches us that it is the
supremest form of folly to expect something for nothing, which most gumblers do. The House of Commons in 1818 was in much
the same pickle as it is to-day over the opium business; a member then protest
against "great questions of justice and morality being sacrificed to expediency and then as now we fancy the justice and morality of the agitation were too easily assumed. For nearly three hundred years previously both Church and State had been countenancing lotteries. The first mentioned iu English history took place in 1569 at the western door of St. Paul's Cathedral. From 1693 the Crown derived a large annual revenue from them for nearly a century and
half.
talked of their iujust ee and immorality in The Member of Parliament who 1818 suggested the following epitaph for the Chancellor of the Exchequer :-
VANSITTART, once Chancellor of the Exchequer, "Here lies the Right Honourable NICHOLAS the patron of Bible Societies, the builder of
system of law, has a fine opportunity
which, at all events, cannot be held con- now of removing a statute which should never have been selected for adoption; or
sistent with lotteries in Formosa, however successful these may be.
INNATE CHIVALBY.
(Daily Press, 22nd December.) Having confessed to a very robust and
old-ashioned prejudice against women in politics, we do not expect to be charge.l, on account of what follows, with baving been convertel by the methoʻls of the ladies who
have recently played the role of martyrdom for votes. It is merely that having read a good many of the arguments seriously
advance against the grant ng of electoral suffrage to women, we have beeld another useful a idition to our growing list of the humbugs of the age. The majority of the House of Commons baving professed sympathy with "the Cause", we naturally suspect its deserts, and prefer to cling to our prejudice against the proposed change. The masculine arguments are mostly bad, however, and have nothing better bebind
men being created equal. them than has the American humbug of ali The force is generally acknowledged, we read, of the
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