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on any day by a successful chase, or by finding such fruits of the earth as would supply him with a satisfactory amount of food. He might have as much depending on chances which he could not avoid risking, as the gambler of to-day has when he 'sees red' and stakes his whole fortune on a throw of the dice or a turn of the cards. We cannot be doubtful about the effects of such chance influences on even the individual character. Repeated generation after generation they must have tended to fill men with a gambling spirit, only to be corrected by many generations of steady labor; and unfortunately, even in the steadiest work the element of chance enters largely enough to render the corrective influence of such work on the character of the race (as distinguished from the
individual) much slower than it might otherwise be.
Every man who has to work for a living at all, every man who has to depend in any way on business for wealth (which is different from working for a living) has to trust more or less to chance in many respects. So that nearly all men have their characters in some degree modified by this peculiarity of their environment. The inherited tendency of each one of us towards gambling, in some one or other of its multitudinous forms, is undoubtedly strengthened in this way; though fortunately it may be much more than correspondingly weakened by training, by thought, and by steady pursuance of life's proper work.
That gambling is immoral has been recognized by those who have noticed the effects of established lottery systems, or of gambling establishments such as formerly were allowed to flourish in our cities, to the demoraliza-
tion and ruin of thousands--among rich and poor alike. Governments which once originated lotteries, and
reaped large profit from them, now not only cease to raise money in so iniquitous a manner, but forbid lotteries, and, as far as they can, prevent them. That they remain an attraction for an immense number of
our people is shown by the circumstance that lotteries permitted on the Continent advertise largely in English newspapers and periodicals, and that their circulars reach thousands of Englishmen through the post. I have myself had experience of the assiduity's of Continental lottery promoters in both forms, having received
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