As to other gaming in clubs, chiefly card-playing, the reader who plods through the long technical judgment of Mr. Justice Hawkins in _Jenks_ v. _Turpin_ (13 Q.B.D.) will be chiefly impressed by the feeling that the police authorities systematically fail to make use of the existing laws, which is indeed the fact; but this is owing in great measure to difficulties in obtaining evidence, and the natural reluctance to order raids while the gamesters have the power to retaliate in case of failure. When elaborate preparations have been made at the cost of much labour, time, and expense, heavy bribery will often obtain the needful warning even from within the police force. The great clubs are seldom or never touched, and until a special department is formed at Scotland Yard under an able and determined chief, with absolute power of instant dismissal and punishment and liberal reward in dealing with his subordinates, our social life will continue to be poisoned with the evils of club gambling. If this were done and the old £10 limit named above once more revived, and greater power conferred to punish the players as well as the club committees and proprietors, club gambling would dwindle and the career of the professional gamester become less profitable and more precarious, while fortunes and incomes now thrown away would be applied to fruitful and honest purposes.
_Petty Gambling._—In the matter of petty gambling what is needed is not so much amendments of the law (the enormous demand for playing-cards seems, indeed, to make the reimposition of a tax advisable) as its assiduous application by the authorities. It is now so diffused, unhappily owing in great part to the habit the nation has fallen into of looking upon gambling as a venial vice, if vice at all, that their task may well seem endless; and in this connection the most effective legislative enactment, for petty gambling is very widespread amongst juveniles, might well be some considered scheme compulsorily providing for teaching the young in primary and secondary schools how wrong it is and what evils it leads to. The materials exist for enabling this to be done in a very incisive manner, and by the time such systematic lessons have permeated the rising generation their elders may become as ashamed of indulging in betting and gambling as they may now be said to be of drunkenness.