Now I am not preaching at this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning; but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not republican.

It belongs to two phases of society,--a cankered over-civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements.

Real Republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it.

This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively quiet.

But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, and with all its immense attractions to the sense and the feelings,--to which I plead very susceptible,--the disguise is too thin that covers it, and everybody knows what it means.