In the forefront of existing legislation with regard to betting is the great statute known as the Betting Act 1853, 16 & 17 Vict. c. 119. “This most salutary Act,” as Lord Chief Justice Russell called it, was passed when betting by the deposit of ready money was carried on to an enormous extent in houses and offices in towns, and only to a very limited extent in race-course enclosures; and the Attorney-General of the day, in telling the House of Commons that the Bill was not intended to interfere with Tattersall’s, was either unaware how rapidly the ready-money system at the races was growing, or designedly suppressed allusion to it, as an awkward question not absolutely necessary to be faced at the time. The Act crushed the town houses, and the business was transferred to the rings, and the question of the application of the Act to these open-air betting-shops was not decided by the (Criminal) High Court until 1897, in _Hawke_ v. _Dunn_ (1897, 1 Q.B.), when Mr. Justice Hawkins, whose knowledge of the Turf was well known, delivered an unanimous judgment on behalf of the five judges of the Queen’s Bench Division who heard the case, holding the rings to be nothing but betting-houses or places. This meant police raids upon the rings, and the writer was assured at Scotland Yard that the police force would do its duty. But the stoppage of half the race meetings in the country was involved, and the Jockey Club and the bookmakers immediately trumped up a collusive civil case—_Powell_ v. _Kempton Park Co., Ltd._ (1897, 2 Q.B.)—which could be carried above the (Criminal) High Court. The supposed plaintiff was a clerk in the office of the business men of the Jockey Club. It could not be found that he was either a householder or a ratepayer at the suburban address endorsed on the writ. His only status was obtained by getting a single share in the Kempton Park Co. from one of its directors, a bookmaker, and within a month of the above decision a writ was issued by him under the pretext that he wished to prevent the company permitting the illegalities condemned in _Hawke_ v. _Dunn_, but for the real purpose of re-trying the question in a form which might give a chance of overthrowing that decision in the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. In each case the Courts were divided, but the majority of both went against the unanimous judgment of the Criminal Judges, although the collusion and misstatements were of so scandalous a nature that they were denounced by more than one member of the latter tribunal. These cases were long, but for the general public the question of whether the existing legislation of the Act of 1853 ought or ought not to have been held to apply to the rings can be put in a nutshell. All the Courts agreed that the rings must be treated as if they were capable of being “places.” How then could they be ruled out of the Act? Everything turned upon the construction of the language