'Hazard' as a mode of dicing by which sharpers live, and young
men of family and fortune are ruined; but what do any of us know of
'seven being the main,' or 'eleven being the nick to seven?' Do we come
here to be instructed in this lore, and are the unusual crowds (drawn
hither, I suppose, by the novelty of the expected entertainment) to take
a lesson with us in these unholy mysteries, which they are to practice
in the evening in the low gaming-houses in St. James Street, pithily
called by a name which should inspire a salutary terror of entering
them? Again, I say, let the cause be struck out of the paper. Move the
court, if you please, that it may be restored, and if my brethren think
that I do wrong in the course that I now take, I hope that one of them
will officiate for me here, and save me from the degradation of trying
'whether there be more than six ways of nicking seven on the dice,
allowing seven to be the main and eleven to be a nick to seven'--a
question, after all, admitting of no doubt, and capable of mathematical
demonstration."

With equal fervor Lord Kenyon inveighed against the pernicious usage of
gambling, urging that the hells of St. James's should, be indicted as
common nuisances. The 'legal monk,' as Lord Carlisle stigmatized him for
his violent denunciations of an amusement countenanced by women of the
highest fashion, even went so far as to exclaim--"If any such
prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and the guilty parties are
convicted, whatever may be their rank or station in the country, though
they may be the first ladies in the land, they shall certainly exhibit
themselves in the pillory."

The same considerations, which decided Lord Loughborough not to try an
action brought by a wager concerning chicken-hazard, made Lord
Ellenborough decline to hear a cause where the plaintiff sought to
recover money wagered on a cock-fight. "There is likewise," said Lord
Ellenborough, "another principle on which I think an action on such
wagers cannot be maintained. They tend to the degradation of courts of
justice. It is impossible to be engaged in ludicrous inquiries of this
sort consistently with that dignity which it is essential to the public
welfare that a court of justice should always preserve. I will not try
the plaintiff's right to recover the four guineas, which might involve
questions on the weight of the cocks and the construction of their steel
spurs."

It has already been remarked th