But of all the judicial decisions on record, none was delivered with more comical effect than Lord Loughborough's decision not to hear a cause brought on a wager about a point in the game of 'Hazard.' A constant frequenter of Brookes's and White's, Lord Loughborough was well known by men of fashion to be fairly versed in the mysteries of gambling, though no evidence has ever been found in support of the charge that he was an habitual dicer. That he ever lost much by play is improbable; but the scandal-mongers of Westminster had some plausible reasons for laughing at the virtuous indignation of the spotless Alexander Wedderburn, who, whilst sitting at _Nisi Prius_, exclaimed, "Do not swear the jury in this case, but let it be struck out of the paper. I will not try it. The administration of justice is insulted by the proposal that I should try it. To my astonishment I find that the action is brought on a wager as to the mode of playing an illegal, disreputable, and mischievous game called 'Hazard;' whether, allowing seven to be the main, and eleven to be a nick to seven, there are more ways than six of nicking seven on the dice? Courts of justice are constituted to try rights and redress injuries, not to solve the problems of the gamesters. The gentlemen of the jury and I may have heard of '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."