The passion for gaming, again, "the school in which most highwaymen of great eminence have been bred," was a fruitful source of immoral degeneracy. Every one gambled. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1731 there is the following entry: "At night their Majesties played for the benefit of the groom porter, and the king (George II) and queen each won several hundreds, and the Duke of Grafton several thousands of pounds." His Majesty's lieges followed his illustrious example, and all manner of games of chance with cards or dice, such as hazard, Pharaoh, basset, roly-poly, were the universal diversion in clubs, public places, and private gatherings. The law had thundered, but to no purpose, against "this destructive vice," inflicting fines on those who indulged in it, declaring securities won at play void, with other penalties, yet gaming throve and flourished. It was fostered and encouraged by innumerable hells, which the law in vain strove to put down. Nightly raids were made upon them. In the same number of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ as that just quoted it is recorded, that "the High Constable of Holborn searched a notorious gaming-house behind Gray's Inn Road; but the gamesters were fled, only the keeper was arrested and bound over for £200." Again, I find in Wade's "Chronology" that "Justice Fielding, having received information of a rendezvous of gamesters in the Strand, procured a strong party of the Guards, who seized forty-five of the tables, which they broke to pieces, and carried the gamesters before the justice. . . . Under each of the broken tables were observed two iron rollers and two private springs, which those who were in the secret could touch and stop the turning whenever they had flats to deal with." No wonder these establishments throve. They were systematically organized, and administered by duly appointed officers.