Thus in England, at the commencement of the twentieth century, the world of society, commerce, finance, and athletic sport is saturated with gambling, more or less veiled or entirely open. Individual and family ruin from it in all classes is frequent; and there are thousands of cases stopping short of this, but entailing, besides material loss and suffering, the lowering of the moral and mental nature, thus affecting the intellectual and religious fibre of the people. But the evil to the nation does not stop here. Until lately, at all events, the highest Courts of Law, as well as the lower ones, did not escape the indirect taint, and even now politicians and office-holders, who would be ostracised in Japan, continue to allow themselves, and very often their households, to be deeply involved in gambling transactions in their homes, their clubs, and with low practitioners of the race-course ring, their children in numberless cases copying the evil habit. A young heir to a peerage, a candidate for a seat in Parliament, whose father is considered to be a great political light and would wish it to be supposed that he is not without reforming zeal, although fencing with the question of the betting ring, boasted to a companion of his sudden acquisition of £2000, laughing at the idea of having worked for it, and explained that it came from the bookmakers at one meeting. The public services are corrupted, particularly the Police and the Post Office, the latter institution rendering many unnecessary services to the gambling system, in the profits of which it largely shares, and not making the special efforts which we see in the United States and elsewhere to hamper professional gambling. The nation as a whole is, it may be hoped, too healthy in a moral sense to allow a further continuance of this social plague without a great effort to grapple with it; but the bitter experience of the nineteenth century demonstrates how futile it would be to rely solely, or even to any great extent, upon the unaided attempts of educational persuasion to root it out. These, indeed, must not be relaxed, they must be increased and multiplied, and should be supplemented by more extensive and systematic endeavours, aiming at improved conditions of life for the poor, and further amelioration of health, and opportunities for recreation; but betting and gambling should also be made, as they can be made, by amended and better applied legal regulations, far less profitable, and more difficult, dangerous, and disgraceful, whether for the rich or the needy. There need be no real interference with the liberty of the subject; for that liberty, regarded in a true light, should not confer any licence to trade upon the ignorance, weakness, or folly of others, which is the characteristic of all gamesters, and not least of those belonging to the professional betting system. STOCK EXCHANGE GAMBLING By A. J. WILSON