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e the demoralization of the people resulting from the immorality of the Government in encouraging by lotteries the gambling spirit, was greater even than in England.
The fairest system for such lotteries as we have hitherto considered was that adopted in the Hamburg lotteries. Here, the whole money for which tickets were sold was distributed in the form of prizes, except a deduction of 10 per cent. made from the amount of each prize at the time of payment.
Before pausing to consider the grossly unfair systems which have been, and still are, adopted in certain foreign
lotteries, it may be well to notice that the immorality of lotteries was not recognized a century ago so clearly as it is now; and therefore, in effect, those who arranged them were not so blameworthy as men are who, in our own time, arrange lotteries, whether openly or surreptitiously. Even so late as half a century ago an American lawyer, of high character, was not ashamed openly to defend lotteries in these terms. 'I am no friend,' he said, ' to lotteries, but I cannot admit that they are per se criminal or immoral when authorized by law. If they were nuisances, it was in the manner in which they were managed. In England, if not in France' (how strange this sounds), ' there were lotteries annually instituted by Government, and it was considered a fair way to reach the pockets of misers and persons disposed to dissipate their funds. The American Congress of 1776 instituted a national lottery, and perhaps no body of men ever surpassed them in intelligence and virtue.' De Morgan, remarking on this expression of opinion, says that it shows what a man of high character for integrity and knowledge thought of lotteries twenty years ago (he wrote in 1839). ' The opinions which he expressed were at that time,' continued De Morgan, 'shared, we venture to say, by a great number.' The experience of those who arranged these earlier State lotteries showed that from men in general, especially the ignorant (forming the great bulk of the population who place such reliance on their luck),
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