Foreign lotteries.
(6.) With regard to foreign lotteries, the offences constituted are: (a) Setting up, or selling tickets for, lotteries by virtue of a grant from any foreign power. 9 Geo. I., c. 19. (b) Issuing tickets for numbers in foreign lotteries, and setting up duplicates of such lotteries. 6 Geo. II., c. 35. (c) Selling tickets for any lottery authorised by any foreign power, or in any lottery unless authorised by Act of Parliament, and publishing scheme for the sale of such tickets. 4 Geo. IV., c. 60, s. 41. (d) Publishing any advertisement relating to the drawing of any foreign lottery, or to the sale of tickets therein. 6 & 7 Wm. IV., c. 66.
In MacNee v. Persian Investment Corporation[[289]] the defendant company was formed for the purpose (inter alia) of carrying into effect an agreement, whereby the defendant company were to secure a monopoly of all operations in Persia relating to loans redeemable by drawings with bonuses and to lotteries, the promotion of lottery companies, and the sale of lottery tickets. The defendants’ prospectus stated the main object of the company to be to promote lottery loans on the lines in vogue on the Continent, and that five issues would be made annually in Persia. Held that the agreement was not illegal within 9 Geo. I., c. 19, which statute (semble except as to the sale of tickets) only applied to lotteries in this country. Nor was it within 6 & 7 Wm. IV., c. 66, seeing that it was a mere general intimation as to future lotteries, not an announcement of any particular lottery. It should be observed that it was consistent with the agreement and the prospectus that all the operations of the company should be conducted in Persia.
What amounts to a lottery. Allport v. Nutt Sweepstakes.
The following cases show what will constitute a lottery within the meaning of the Acts:—
In Allport v. Nutt[[290]] plaintiff sued for £100, having subscribed £1 to an adventure on the terms that a certain race being about to be run, the name of each of the horses entered for the running should be put on a separate card, and that all should be mixed up in a box; and the same with the names of the subscribers, which were put into another box; that one card should be drawn out of the horse box, and then one card out of the other. The person whose name should be drawn out after the horse which should afterwards win the race should win £100. Defendant pleaded that the transaction amounted to a lottery, or, in the alternative, to a wager under the Statute of Anne. In answer to this, plaintiff urged that the Lottery Acts only contemplated cases where unfair advantage was taken, relying for this argument on the recitals contained in the Statute of William III.
Suggested distinction between lotteries and sweepstakes.
It was further argued that this transaction was a sweepstakes, and not a lottery. “The difference” (argued Serjeant Byles) “between a lottery and a sweepstakes is this: in a lottery, the party getting it up receives from the purchasers of tickets more than the value of the prizes; whereas in a sweepstakes all the money obtained from the subscribers is paid over to the winners; the party to whom the subscriptions are paid is a mere stakeholder.”
Argument that lotteries for legal horse-race not illegal.
It was also contended that a lottery to be determined by the event of a legal horse-race was not prohibited; that “all the Lottery Acts contemplate a scheme whereby the actor is attempting to enrich himself at the expense of the community. The transaction in this case is nothing more than betting on a legal horse-race, no single individual staking more than £1.”[[291]] But the Court overruled all these arguments.