edifices devoted to worshipping the Deity! Unhappy indeed, that the lover of freedom should consent to aim a deliberate blow at his proud institutions; and that the Christian votary should inflict a deep wound upon religion and morality, with the ostensible view of aiding in their promotion !

"But whatever may have been the origin of lottery grants in the United States, the objects to which they have been applied are not more multifarious than the number and amount of schemes have been overwhelming. In the different states, there are no less than twelve or fourteen lotteries which claim the sanction of a legal existence. What sum may be hazarded in a single day, it is difficult to calculate with any thing like precision. That it is alarming in magnitude, may be presumed from the fact that, in the single state of New York, schemes have been issued, since the adoption of her new constitution, to the enormous sum of thirty-seven millions of dollars! In Pennsylvania, schemes issued under the authority of seven other states, were, for a long time, vended to an incredible amount, in direct violation of law. It could not have been anticipated by the provincial assembly of 1762, when it prohibited lotteries with a striking preamble and a high penalty, that a few years would witness their multiplication to such an extent.

"This colonial legislation, whilst it displays the domestic feelings of the colonists, at an early period, likewise discovers the exotic source of the lottery system. But this more distinctly appears from the proviso of the act, which saves from the general prohibition, 'all state lotteries enacted and licensed by act of parliament in Great Britain. There is no doubt the parent country taught her imitative offspring to domesticate the lottery, by pointing out its manifold uses. The lottery, then, is a weed which is not indigenous to this soil. It did not spring up in this country, the result of necessity or the dictate of pecuniary expediency. In the enactment referred to, our ancestors pronounced it to be a mischievous and unlawful game-detrimental to youth, and ruinous to the poor-the source of fraud and dishonesty-alike hurtful to industry, commerce, and trade-and baneful to the interests of good citizenship, morality, and virtue."

After detailing some interesting facts which were elicited by the labours of a committee of the British house of commons in the year 1808, the author proceeds to sketch the progress of public opinion in Great Britain, which finally resulted in the overthrow of the system. He says:

"Other testimony shows what it is here unnecessary to quote-the ingenious and multiplied expedients of the lottery brokers for evading the laws, as well as the perfidy of the government officers in winking at transgressions, and partaking of the fruits of illicit adventures. The whole report discloses a scene of iniquity so multiform, and of misery so hopeless, as to sicken and appal the mind. The restrictions intended by new statutes soon ceased to exhibit any mitigation in their effects, till at last the whole system was abscinded as the most noxious and venomous excrescence that could deform the legislation or poison the moral atmosphere of England. This temporary suspension of the system was preceded by events, which, perhaps, will ever be remembered in the annals of self-destruction. A scheme was formed in London, displaying several magnificent prizes of £50,000 and £100,000, which tempted to ventures of very large amount, and the night of the drawing was signalized by fifty cases of suicide! With these tragedies terminated, for a brief period, the career of the lottery in the English isle!

"From such facts, what opinion are we authorized to form of the magnitude of this evil? An evil which paralyses industry, destroys domestic concord, saps the foundation of correct principles, and leads to the commission of the darkest crimes in the criminal calendar? What ought we to think of those laws which give it protection? As well might a legislature cherish, by the public bounty, a monster whose pestilential and baneful breath scattered deformity, disease, and death, widely over the country.

"But the immense revenue of a million pounds sterling, which the treasury annually derived from the lottery, was too great a temptation to be long resisted. It was soon again introduced into the budget, as an item, which, notwithstanding its plain consequences in the extinction of revenue, the state of the finances' could not forego. Large sums were year after year levied upon the people, by this detestable expedient to fill the coffers of the treasury. It is related upon good authority, that the annual subsidy has seldom been less than a million, since the period of the revolution. If it required the issuing of schemes in the Union Canal to the amount of thirty-three millions for the purpose of collecting $340,000, we may presume that the annual sales in England must be startling.

"The evils of the system again invoked the attention of the British public in 1819, and gave rise to an interesting debate in parliament. The propriety of its continuance was discussed by such men as Lyttleton, Buxton, Wilberforce, Canning, and Castlereagh. The whole subject was passed in review-its erroneous policy-its irremediable mischiefsits sure tendencies and ascertained results-but all gave way to its invincible necessity as a means of revenue. The committee of 1808 had disclosed one pregnant and overwhelming fact, which furnished to various arguments a convincing and unanswerable reply. It was ascertained that, if the lottery were abolished, the increased consumption of exciseable articles would more than supply its loss to the treasury. In vindication of the system, the chancellor, it is alleged, assumed a position which is irreconcilable with all correct principles of government, and every sound notion of ethics. He is said to have asserted that there was always floating in society a given quantity of vicious inclinations, which he had a right to turn to the best account-that, as the spirit of gambling was rife, it was justifiable, in finance, to make it ancillary to the public burthens. It is not easy to decide whether such a sentiment is more incompatible with policy, considered merely as a matter of profit, or at variance with the plain principles of morality. Shall we pamper vices because they exist! Is it enlightened prudence or true virtue to hold out lures to the simple, the ignorant, and the credulous, which, if successful, must debase their characters, and render them dishonest citizens or dependent paupers? But without formally controverting a dogma which teaches such erroneous doctrines, we may leave it to the silent reflection of the philanthropist, satisfied that he will discard it as unsound, false, and illiberal. In 1823 the lottery was again sought to be propagated, but the tide of popular favour had so violently set against it as to require the salvo that it was proposed for the last time. Whether it has not again been recently revived is not certainly known, but surely the British nation has been abundantly admonished of its intrinsic banefulness to induce its entire relinquishment. Upon the invention of

1A recent English newspaper informs us that the last state lottery was drawn in England in October, 1826, and that France has also announced her intention to abandon the lottery system.

savings banks for the benefit of the poor, it was found to present the greatest impediment to their success. But, during the period of its temporary discontinuance, these institutions recovered from their languishing condition, and gradually advanced in their deposits and usefulness.

"If the spirit of liberty be indeed rising in Great Britain, let the political sentinel rear aloft and higher the banner of private virtue and enlightened sentiment. If the people are to express their power, may it not be a brute, animal force, but may it be tempered by moral restraints and virtuous impulses. Let the lottery at least be weeded out as fatal to the true spirit and best interests of freedom.

Mr. Tyson draws the following comparison between gambling by lotteries and the other ordinary modes of dissipating fortune and character in games of hazard :

"Would licensed gambling tables be introductive of so much distress, such variety and blackness of crime? In the first place, the lottery scatters mischief with a more prodigal hand than other kinds of gambling. It holds out enticements which reach every class in the community. It has attractions for the poor as well as the rich, for the concealed speculator no less than the avowed libertine. The subdivision of chances is so minute as to include among the adventurers, the apprentice to a trade, the indented girl, and the chimney sweep. But it does not stop here. With its own undistinguishing spirit, it sacrifices older victims, and ascends into higher walks. It penetrates into situations which would prove impervious to the contaminating influences of ordinary gambling. While in common games the personal agency which is necessary must expose the infamy of participation, the odium of holding tickets may be prevented by committing to another the charge of the purchase. It is thus that persons pretending to respectability have been known to speculate in lotteries, without incurring the disgrace which, in most communities, is incident to the practice of gambling.

"The risks are greater in the lottery than in other gaming. The chance of the latter may be as one to one, or greater, at the discretion of the player. The hazards of the former are frequently in the proportion of one to thousands. In the one, loss of fortune may ensue in a single night; but, in the other, the excitements of hope and the agony of disappointment alternate in such quick succession, that the unhappy adventurer has a protracted struggle with the fickleness of chance, before he can know the result of the contest. In the mean time he is rendered a useless, not to say a pernicious, member of society. His principles are contaminated by familiar association with infamy and guilt, and his habits debauched by indulging in the excesses to which he

has been driven.

"The life of a regular gamester may admit of useful employment in the intervals of play. But the adventurer in the lottery broods by day and night over his tickets-his imagination is filled with the grand idea of possessing the capital prize-and his mind is held in that state of intensity and excitement which admits of nothing to divert it from the one great and absorbing object of its contemplation. Ordinary gambling may ruin the victim of its infatuation at once, and drive him to suicide; or he may borrow from his successful companion, beyond the possibility of repayment, in the hope of retrieving his broken fortunes. The speculator in the lottery, on the other hand, is not vanquished at a blow, but, in the caprices or accidents of the wheel, though often the loser, he is sometimes the gainer; new stimulus is thus imparted to his cupidityhe is urged on to new ventures-continued ill luck nourishes the hope of

its speedy termination-and great good fortune only whets his appetite for greater;

'As in the dropsy, if indulged the thirst,

The patient joys, but his disease is nurst.'

He soon finds that he is incapable of a higher effort than discussing the merits of a scheme, or lounging upon the counter of a lottery office, so that that which was resorted to as promising a great blessing, has become the bane of his happiness, and the solemn business of his life. When his means are exhausted, and his friends lose their confidence, he cannot gratify his passion for the game, or his pruriency for its successes, by appealing, like the regular gamester, to the fortunate winner for a new supply. Driven, as well by the desperate necessity of ministering to his excitement, as by depraved principles and reckless despair, he is ready for the perpetration of any enormity. Which, then, has the preponderance of evil as an engine of state? If the risks be greater, by which the prospect of loss must be commensurately increased-if it be more likely to lead to incurable idleness-if its inevitable and certain tendency be to intemperance, to perfidy, to fraud, and to crime-and if its pernicious influence be more widely diffused-we can be at no loss to which to attribute the loathsome superiority."

The spirit of speculation is indeed one of the evil tendencies of American character, and should be repressed in every possible way, or, at least regulated and kept within proper bounds. When so repressed, it may prove, and has indeed proved, the prompter and the successful agent in the noblest enterprises.

We present a single additional extract on account of the useful information which it contains. It furnishes an abstract of what has been done in other states of this Union in the shape of legislative enactments upon the subject of lotteries.

"In New York the lottery system has prevailed to an alarming extent. During the year 1830, schemes were drawn, in the city of New York alone, to the overwhelming amount of nine millions two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. The year 1833 witnessed its termination in that great commonwealth, by virtue of an act passed in pursuance of the spirit which dictated a salutary provision in her revised constitution. That constitution, in the spirit of enlightened and genuine philanthropy, has disabled the legislature from ever making the grant of a lottery. The provision is in these words:

"Art. 7. Sec. 11. 'No lottery shall hereafter be authorized in this state; and the legislature shall pass laws to prevent the sale of all lottery tickets within this state, except in lotteries already provided for by law.'

"Through the statute book of Virginia there are scattered forty or fifty acts of assembly authorizing lotteries for various objects of a local nature, connected for the most part with the cause of improvement. At the session of 1832-3 alone, no less than twelve new ones were enacted. Of this frightful number, it is consolatory to hope, from the diminutive sums mentioned in the grants, that only three or four will be rendered injurious by being carried into execution. An act of 1825 prohibited the sale of foreign tickets, but as it could not be executed, licenses were substituted."

"It is not a little remarkable that the Virginia legislature at the sesVOL. XXI.—NO. 42.

46

sion of 1832-3, should authorize 'twelve new lotteries to be drawn,' while an act to suppress them altogether was substantially passed by both houses! The bill for their suppression had received the sanction of the delegates, and was returned with an unimportant amendment from the senate, which, as it was the last day of the session, the former had not time to consider. It remains for us to hope that it will be revived and concurred in with unanimity.

"In Ohio, Vermont, Maine, and Michigan, the lottery system is destroyed; and in Louisiana, where twenty grants have been authorized since the year 1810, its existence is to terminate on the first day of the coming year.

"The constitutions of Maryland and Tennessee have wisely interfered in the destruction of all power on the part of the legislature, to license so pernicious a species of gambling.

"New Hampshire passed a law in 1791 for the suppression of the evil, the penalty of which was altered in 1807, and this again by an act of 1827, which is still in operation. This statute makes it penal to dispose of any property by means of a lottery, or to sell foreign lottery tickets. There is no grant in existence, but until recently foreign tickets were sold in almost every bookseller's shop in the state in open defiance of the law."

"In North Carolina the system is virtually abandoned by the_suspension of schemes, and the absence of lottery offices for the sale of tickets; although the grant for the Neuse river is said still to be in being.

"In Massachusetts the clandestine sale of lottery tickets, which had been extensively carried on in Boston, was arrested at the session of the legislature for 1832-3, with an energy and unanimity of sentiment highly gratifying.

The legislature of New Jersey, for the last twelve or fifteen years, has uniformly resisted the most urgent applications for grants of lotteries, but in defiance of the penalties annexed to selling foreign tickets, they are exposed in every part of the state. We are informed upon the best authority, that extraordinary arts are employed to induce their purchase. Newspaper publications, personal solicitations and importunities, handbills thrown in at almost every door, and the exposure of artful and gaudy signs to public view, are among the means resorted to. It is to be hoped that this violation of their laws will be stopped, both from considerations relating to their own citizens, as well as to those of Philadelphia. If the practice be connived at by the authorities of New Jersey, she may expect, now that lotteries in Pennsylvania are terminated, to be darkened by the flight into Camden, and the neighbouring towns, of the numerous lottery brokers with which Philadelphia was recently swarming. Will she consent to receive into her bosom two hundred greedy lottery brokers to prey upon the vitals of her national prosperity? Will she consent to render inoperative the legislation of Pennsylvania, by presenting to her citizens an easy opportunity of evading the law in going beyond the reach of its penalties?

"There exists no lottery in Illinois, but, owing to the absence of statutory prohibition against the sale of foreign tickets, they have been offered for sale during the past summer. Bills for the introduction of the lottery system have been from time to time presented to the legislature, but without success. At the last session of the senate, a bill received its sanction for the purpose of improving the condition of Purgatory; but a large majority of the house defeated the proposition.

The name of a road well known to travellers passing between Vin