THE COMMON SENSE OF LOTTERIES.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1266, 9 April 1878, Page 3

THE COMMON SENSE OF LOTTERIES.

There is a great deal of sound sense in the following remarks of a northern contemporary on the anti-lottery mania. It is quite certain that the attempt to put down sweeps on races, while betting, whether rightly or wrongly, remains an honored institution, is a mere straining at a gnat and swallowing udoubio humped camel: — Ail classes are fond of (lie gentle excitements of a lottery, and nearly ail classes participate in them when they chance to come under'their notice. It his been well said that if the Legislature did not try to make people saints, the self-reforming nature of an intelligent and educated community, if allowed free play, would be infinitely more satisfactory in results. A full comprehension of this fact might lead to a workable Lotteries Bill being devised. Lotteries are so far injurious thai they demoralise people by encouraging a thirst for sudden gains upon small risks instead of being content with the profits of steady industry ; and, on the art union form, they oftentimes do a serious injury to legitimate tradespeople who find themselves opposed by travelling adventurers, with their trays and boxes of false wares, which are got rid of by lottery, to the depletion of the pockets of the inhabitants of a district and the detriment of the fair trader. Still we cannot reconcile it with our common sense views that while a company of persons may assemble in their own house and gamble lor ruinous sums with cards or dice, others, who have no such desire, may not venture a pound on the chance of getting fifty or five hundred, as it may happen. In a sweepstake a man can measure the exact extent or what he may lose. There is no great or undue excitement to lead him on to a ruinous expenditure. He takes one, two, or half a dozen tickets, pays for them, and quietly waits the result. A man may draw a sweep on a racecourse—and who is it that does not do this—but the law would have it that outside the paddock he may do nothing of the kind. So long as men desire to risk their money on an event, so long will there be found ways to do it in spite of all laws made and passed to the contrary.