Secret Band of Brothers / A Full and True Exposition of All the Various Crimes, Villanies, and Misdeeds of This Powerful Organization in the United States.

by J. H. Green

We give below a very able memorial, from the pen of Prof. Goddard, of Brown University, to the Legislature of Rhode Island.

The undersigned, citizens of Rhode Island, have long regarded the lottery system with unqualified reprobation. They believe it to be a multiform social evil, which is obnoxious to the severest reprehension of the moralist, and which it is the duty of the legislator, in all cases, to visit with the most effective prohibitory sanctions. Entertaining these convictions, the undersigned memorialists cannot withhold them from the Hon. General Assembly of Rhode Island. They invoke the General Assembly to exercise their constitutional powers, promptly and decisively, for the correction of a long-continued, and wide-spread, and pestilent social evil. They ask them, most respectfully and earnestly, to withdraw, as soon as may be, all legislative sanction of the lottery system, and to save Rhode Island from the enduring reproach of being among the last States to abandon that system. The memorialists beg leave to disclaim, in this matter, all personal or political considerations. They are seeking neither to help nor to hurt any political party. They contemplate no aggression upon the rights or the character of individuals. They are engaged in no impracticable scheme of moral reform. They have no fondness for popular agitation. They are what they profess to be, citizens of Rhode Island, and it is only in the quality of citizens of Rhode Island, that they now ask the General Assembly to resort to the most operative penal enactments, for the entire suppression of a system which exists, and which can exist only to disgrace the character of the State, and to injure both the morals and the interests of the people. The memorialists are persuaded that a commanding majority of the citizens of every political party entertain sentiments of decided hostility to all lotteries. In praying, therefore, for legislative interposition, they feel that they are not in advance of public opinion, that they are not urging the General Assembly to anticipate public opinion, but only to imbody it; to accelerate its salutary impulses, and to augment its healthful vigour. The constitutional power of the legislature to interfere in the premises being undisputed, the memorialists beg leave to submit, for consideration, a few only of the many reasons which have forced upon their minds the conclusion—that Rhode Island should lose no time and spare no effort in extirpating the lottery system:—a system which has already worked extensive evil within her borders; which is repugnant to a cultivated moral sense; and which has been branded, both as illegal and immoral, by some of the most enlightened governments upon earth. In this connection, it should be stated, that England, and, it is believed, France likewise, have abandoned the lottery system. Some of the most populous and influential States in this Confederacy have abandoned it. Massachusetts has abandoned it; Pennsylvania has abandoned it; New York has abandoned it. Nay more, so hostile were the people of the latter State to the lottery system, that in revising its Constitution a few years since, they adopted a provision which prohibits the Legislature from ever making a lottery grant. These examples are adduced to show the progress of an enlightened public sentiment upon this subject, and to exhibit the grateful spectacle of governments, differently constituted, exercising their powers for the best interests of the people. The evils which the lottery system creates, and the evils which it exasperates, are so various and complicated, that the undersigned memorialists cannot attempt an enumeration. They are so revolting as to furnish no motive for rhetorical exaggeration. A few only of these evils the undersigned memorialists will now proceed to mention.

1. Lotteries are liable to many of the strongest objections which can be alleged against gambling. They have thus far escaped, it is true, the infamy of gambling, but they can plead no exemption from its malignant consequences. Like gamblers, they are hostile—not to say fatal—to all composure of thought and sobriety of conduct. Like gambling, they inflame the imagination of their victims and their dupes, with visions of ease, and affluence, and pleasure, destined never to be realized. Like gambling, they seduce men, especially the credulous and the unthinking, from the pursuits of regular industry, into the vortex of wild adventure and exasperated passions. Like gambling, they ultimately create a necessity for constant vicious excitement. Like gambling, they often lead to poverty and despair, to insanity and to suicide. Like gambling, they furnish strong temptations to fraud, and theft, and drunkenness. Like gambling, they work, in but too many cases, a permanent depravation of all moral principle and all moral habits. This fearful parallel might easily be extended. The picture here presented of the evils of lotteries, however fearful it may seem, is not overdrawn. This picture will be owned as just, by many a bereaved widow and by many a forsaken wife, who trace all their woes to the temptation into which this respectable and legalized species of gambling had betrayed once affectionate husbands. It will be owned as just by many a child, who has been doomed perchance to a heritage of ignorance and poverty, by a father, for whose weak virtue the potent fascinations of the lottery were found too strong. In many respects, the lottery system may be deemed even more pernicious than ordinary gambling. It spreads a more accomplished snare; it is less offensive to decorum; it is less alarming to consciences which have not lost all sensitiveness; it numbers among its participants multitudes of those who ought to blush and to tremble for thus hazarding their own virtue, and for thus corrupting the virtues of others; it draws within its charmed circle men and women who fill up every gradation of age, and character, and fortune.

2. The lottery system, as at present constituted, presents the strongest temptations to fraud on the part of all those who are concerned either in the drawing of lotteries or in the sale of tickets. It is not known that fraud has in any case been perpetrated, though fraud is suspected. If perpetrated, it would be no easy matter to detect it. The ignorant and the credulous men and women, who seek to better their fortunes by gambling in lottery tickets, know nothing of those mystical combinations of numbers, on which their fate is suspended. Utter strangers as they are to all the "business transactions" of the lottery system, if cheated at all, they are cheated without remedy.

3. The lottery system operates as a most oppressive tax upon the community. This tax is paid, not by the rich and luxurious—but it is paid mainly by those who are struggling for independence, and by those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow—by the servants in our kitchens—by clerks and apprentices, and day-labourers; by mechanics and traders; by the men and women who work in our factories; and in too many instances, it is to be feared, by our hardy yeomanry, who, impatient of the slow profits of agriculture, vainly expect from the chances of the lottery that which is never denied to the efforts of industry. The amount of pauperism and crime, of mental agitation and perchance of mental insanity, which the lottery system must create among these numerous classes, it would not be easy to calculate.

4. Lotteries are the parent of much of the pauperism which is to be found in this young, and free, and prosperous land. It entails poverty upon multitudes directly, by exhausting their limited means in abortive experiments to get rich by "high prizes"—and, yet more, by withdrawing multitudes from a dependence on labour, and accustoming them to hope miracles of good fortune from chance. After repeated disappointments, they discover, when it is too late to profit from the discovery, how sadly they have been duped, and how recklessly they have abandoned their confidence in themselves, and in that gracious Being who never forsakes those who put their trust in him. They sink into despondency, and, seeking to forget themselves, they bring upon their faculties the brutal stupor of intoxication, or they exhilarate them by its delirious gayety. Suicide is often the fearful issue. Dupin ascribes a hundred cases of suicide annually to the lottery system in the single city of Paris. Many years ago a lottery scheme, displaying splendid prizes, was formed in London. Adventures to a very large amount was the consequence, and the night of the drawing was signalized by fifty cases of suicide!

5. Success in lotteries is hardly less fatal than failure. The fortunate adventurer is never satisfied. He ventures again and again, till ruin overtakes him. After all the tempting promises of wealth, which are made by those concerned in this iniquitous system, how very few, except managers of lotteries and venders of lottery tickets, has it ever made rich! and well may it be asked, whom has it ever made more diligent in business, more contented, and respectable, and happy?

6. Lotteries, it is believed, are rendered especially mischievous in this country by the nature of our institutions, and by the spirit of the times. Here, the path to eminence being open to every one—but too many are morbidly anxious to improve their condition; and by means, too, which in the wisdom of Providence were never intended to command success. A mad desire for wealth pervades all classes—it feeds all minds with fantastic hope; it is hostile to all patient toil, and legitimate enterprise, and economical expenditure. It generates a spirit of reckless speculation; it corrupts the simplicity of our tastes; and, what is yet worse, it impairs, not unfrequently, in reference to the transactions of business, the obligations of common honesty. Upon these elements of our social condition and character, the lottery system operates with malignant efficacy.

The undersigned memorialists are far from thinking that, in the preceding remarks, they have exhausted the argument against the lottery system. They have dwelt, in general terms, upon only some of its more prominent evils. They do not allow themselves to believe that, aside from the ranks of those who have a direct personal interest in this system, a man of character could be found in Rhode Island to defend it. The memorialists deem lotteries to be in Rhode Island a paramount social evil. They entreat the General Assembly to survey this evil in all its phases, and then to apply the remedy. The interposition which is now asked at the hands of the Legislature has been delayed too long, either for the interests or for the character of the state. It is time that we protected our interests, and retrieved our character. It is time that the lottery had ceased to be the "domestic institution" of Rhode Island. It is time that we abandoned, and abandoned for ever, the policy of supporting schools, and building churches, with the wages of iniquity. The memorialists are aware that the General Assembly have made lottery grants, which have not yet expired. They seek not in any way to interfere with those grants; but in concluding this expression of their views, they cannot avoid repeating their earnest entreaty that the legislature would come up without unnecessary delay to the great work of reforming an abuse, which no length of time, or patronage of numbers, or policy of state, should be permitted to shelter for another hour.