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contribute a sovereign to form a prize of 10/.; and that each of the ten is allowed to draw one ticket from among ten, one marked ticket giving the drawer the prize. That is a fair lottery; each person has paid the right price for his chance. The proof is, that if anyone buys up all the chances at the price, thus securing the certainty of drawing the marked ticket, he obtains as a prize precisely the sum he has expended.
This, I may remark, is the essential condition for a fair lottery, whatever the number of prizes; though we have no occasion to consider here any case except the very simple case of a one-prize lottery. Where there are several prizes, whether equal or unequal in value,
we have only to add their value together: the price for all the tickets together must equal the sum we fires obtain. For instance, if the ten persons in our illustrative case, instead of marking one ticket were to mark three, for prizes worth 51., 3l., and 21., the lottery would be equally fair. Anyone, by buying up all the ten tickets, would be sure of all three prizes, that is, he would pay ten pounds and get ten pounds--a fair bargain.
But suppose, reverting to one-prize lotteries, that the drawer of the marked ticket were to receive only 8/. instead of 10l. as a prize. Then clearly the lottery would be unfair. The test is, that a man must pay 10/. to insure the certainty of winning the prize of 8l., and will then be 2/. out of pocket. So of all such cases. When the prize, if there is but one, or the sum of all the prizes together, if there are several, falls short of the price of all the tickets together, the lottery is an unfair one. The sale of each ticket is a swindle; the total amount of which the ticket-purchasers are swindled being the sum by which the value of the prize or prizes falls short of the price of the tickets.
We see at once that a number of persons in a room together would never allow an unfair lottery of this sort. If each of the ten persons put a sovereign into the pool, each having a ticket, the drawer of the prize ticket would be clearly entitled to the pool. If one of the ten started the lottery, and if when the 101., including his own, has been paid in to the pool, he proposed to take charge of the pool, and to pay 81. to the drawer of the 02
marked ticket, it would be rather too obvious that he was putting 21. in his pocket. But lotteries are not conducted in this simple way, or so that the swindle becomes obvious to all engaged. As a matter of fact, all lotteries are so arranged that the manager or managers of the lottery put a portion of the proceeds (or pool) into their pockets. Otherwise it would not be worth while to start a lottery. Whether a lottery is started by a nation, or for a cause, or for personal profit, it always is intended for profit; and profit is always secured, and indeed can only be secured, by making the total value of the prizes fall short of the sum received for the tickets.
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