Title page of Hey's first dissertation.
Perhaps duelling is no longer the concern it once was, but gambling and suicide are still concerns for many people. With the rise of the Internet and widespread public access to a nearly global network of communication, both issues have been complicated once again with, among other things, the lure of online gambling.
In the mid-1780s in England, gambling, duelling, and suicide were hot topics; Richard Hey capitalized on the remaining public interest some years later in 1812 by publishing three lengthy essays he had written as a combined volume: Three Dissertations; on the Pernicious Effects of Gambling, on Duelling, and on Suicide. Hey had originally written and published the pieces over twenty years earlier to win a fifty guinea prize: a not insubstantial amount of money at the time! At the time of original composition, Hey was a fellow of Magdalene College, whether of Oxford of Cambridge, he does not specify.
Hey moralizes broadly on his topics. When discussing gambling, for instance, he not only discusses the bad effects that gaming might have on the player, but also the damage likely to be done to those who lose against him, those who see him game, his family, and the world at large. Suicide is a waste of what is not the suicide’s to give away; Hey argues that no man has the choice over what should happen to his life — his lot is to endure whatever falls to him, not to make a premature choice to exit a situation which he may feel is untenable.
While Hey’s arguments may seem out-of-date to us, they were probably reassuring reading at the time they were published — England was still scrambling to catch up with events in mainland Europe and there were plenty who felt that the world was crumbling around them and would never be stable again. Hey’s arguments that gambling was bad, duelling evil, and suicide irreligious probably felt comforting to many.
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