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d at the lottery-office. M. Menut insinuates this, and a recent occurrence at Naples suggests at least the possibility of collusion between gamblers and the drawers of lottery numbers. But in the case above cited the smallness of the stakes warrants the belief that the result was purely accidental. Certainly the gamblers would have staked more had they known what was to be the actual result of the drawing. The larger winner seems to have staked two sous only, the prize being, I suppose, 1,313,500 times the stake, instead of 1,000,000 as on a Similar venture in the Geneva lottery. Possibly the stake was a foreign coin, and hence the actual value of the prize was not a round number of francs. The smaller winner probably staked five sous or thereabouts in foreign coin.
Simple quaternes, as we have said, occurred frequently in France. De Morgan remarks that the enormous number of those who gambled ' is proved to all who have studied chances arithmetically by the numbers of simple quaternes which were gained: in 1822, fourteen; in 1823, six; in 1824, sixteen; in
1825, nine, &c.' He does not, however, state the arithmetical proportion involved. If we take the average number at ten per annum, it would follow that about five million persons per annum staked money on this special venture--the simple quaterne--alone. Quetelet states that in the five years 1816-1820, the total sums hazarded on all forms of venture in the Paris lottery amounted to 126,944,000 francs--say 5,000,000/. The total winnings of the speculators amounted to 94,750,000 francs--say about 3,790,000/. The total amount returned to the treasury was 32,194,000 francs, or about 1,288,000/., a clear average profit of 257,600/. per annum. Thus the treasury received rather more than a fourth of the sum hazarded. The return to the speculators corresponded nearly to that which would have been received if all the ventures made had been on a determinate single number.
In all these methods, the greater the number of speculators the greater the gains of those who keep the lottery. The most fortunate thing which can happen to the lottery-keepers is that some remarkably lucky hit should be made by a speculator, or a series of such hits. For then they can advertise the great gains made by a few lucky speculators, saying nothing of the multitudes who have lost, with the result that millions are tempted to become speculators There is this great advantage in the Geneva system: that the total number of losers can never be known except to the lottery-keepers. In the old-fashioned English system the number of losers was as well known as the number of winners and their
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