“The foundation of the lottery,” it said, “is so radically vicious, that under no system can it become an efficient source of gain, and yet be divested of the evils and calamities of which it has proved so baneful a source.
“Idleness, dissipation, and poverty are increased; sacred and confidential trusts are betrayed; domestic comfort is destroyed; madness often created; crimes subjecting the perpetrators to death are committed.
“No mode of raising money appears so burdensome, so pernicious, and so unproductive. No species of adventure is known where the chances are so great against the adventurers; none where the infatuation is more powerful, lasting, and destructive.
“In the lower classes of society, the persons engaged are, generally speaking, either immediately or ultimately tempted to their ruin; and there is scarcely any condition of life so destitute and so abandoned, that its distresses have not been aggravated by this allurement to gambling.”
Notwithstanding the strong nature of this report, the labors of the committee were fruitless. Various attempts at amelioration were made, but the evil was not finally abolished until the year 1826.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Mr. J. B. Heath says of the early lotteries, in his valuable volume entitled “Some Account of the Grocers’ Company,”—“There is not one entry in the accounts to show that the prizes were ever paid,” and quotes various documents to prove that they were very difficult to procure. “The science of puffing,” adds this gentleman, “which in our times has attained such perfection, was unknown at that period, and in lieu of placards and advertisements, the more direct mode was adopted of personal solicitation.”
CHAPTER IX.
Wholesale Jobbing.—Insurance on Sick Men.—False Intelligence.—Uselessness of Sir John Barnard’s Act.—Origin of the Blackboard.—Opposition to Loans.—Lord Chatham’s Opinion of Jobbers.—Inviolability of English Funds.—Parisian Banking-Houses.—Proposition to pay off the National Debt.—Extravagance of the Contractors.—Lord George Gordon’s Opinion of them.—Members’ Contracts.—New System adopted.—Abraham Goldsmid.—Bankers’ Coalition broken by him.—His Munificence.—His Death.—Sensation in the City.