drawn to numerous advertisements which appeared in the London and provincial papers on the subject of betting, a raid was made on a large establishment near Covent Garden: books and papers, clerks and managers, were seized and conveyed to Bow Street; and though the employés were ultimately discharged, the proprietor was ultimately fined heavily, the decision of the magistrate being eventually endorsed by the judges to whom the case was referred on appeal. A flight of betting men resulted, the resting-place of some being Glasgow, and of others Edinburgh; from both of which places they put forth their advertisements as before, safe in the knowledge that so far, at all events, the law was on their side. The extension of the Act of 1853 was of course only matter of time; but the first two or three efforts failed signally, principally on account of the blind animosity of the promoters of the measure, which caused them to frame bills which, for intolerance and hopeless stupidity, have perhaps never been equalled. Another cause was a feeling that, while one form of betting was allowed at Tattersall’s and the chief sporting clubs—a form which had shown itself equal to ruining several peers and hundreds of young men of less degree—it was impolitic to over-legislate with regard to the half-crowns and half-sovereigns of working men and small tradesmen, and to say to them, while yet the terrible “plunging” years were fresh in memory, “Dukes and marquises only shall ruin themselves at will, you, the common people, must be saving as well as industrious.”
At last Mr Anderson, one of the members for Glasgow, introduced his Extension Bill (1874), and though his arguments were eminently ridiculous, as he assumed that every advertiser was a swindler, his legislative attempt was a much greater success than any former effort had been in the same direction, and his bill, with