The following Plans have also been transmitted to the Author by Correspondents who appear to be well-wishers to Society. They are here made public, in hopes that from the whole of the suggestions thus offered, some regulations may ultimately be adopted by the Legislature towards effectually remedying this peculiarly dangerous and still-increasing evil.
PLAN I.
"It is proposed, that the Prizes only should be drawn, and that Seven Hours and a Half per Day should be the time of drawing, instead of Five Hours, by which means a lottery of the same number of tickets now drawn in thirty-five days, would be drawn in seven days and a half; and each adventurer would have exactly the same chance as he has by the present mode of drawing; since it is evidently of no consequence to him whether all the blanks remain in the Number Wheel undrawn, or an equal number of Blanks are drawn from a blank and prize wheel; the chance of blank or prize on each ticket being in either case exactly the same.
"According to the usual mode of drawing, 50,000 tickets take about thirty-five days in drawing, which is 1,420-6/7 per day.—By increasing the time of each day's drawing, from five hours to seven and a half, 2,131 tickets would be drawn each day; but as the reading prizes above £.20 thrice, causes some little delay, I reckon only 2000 per day; at which rate 15,000 tickets, the usual proportion of prizes in a Lottery of 50,000 tickets, would be drawn in seven days and a half. Thus the Period of Insurance would be nearly reduced to one-fifth part of its present duration, and the daily insurance on Blanks, and Blank and Prize, which opens the most extensive field for gambling, would be entirely abolished. Reducing, therefore, the time of Insurance to one-fifth, and the numbers drawn to less than one-third of what they have hitherto been, there could scarce remain in Lotteries thus drawn, one-fifteenth part of the insurance as in former Lotteries of an equal number of Tickets.—It is also worthy of remark, that as all the late Lotteries have been thirty-five days at least in drawing, the Insurance Offices had thirty-four to one in their favour the first day, by which circumstance they were enabled to tempt chiefly that class of people who can only gamble on the lowest terms, and to whom gambling is most extensively pernicious, with a very moderate premium, (e.g. about twelve shillings to return twenty pounds) which increases daily by almost imperceptible degrees, and thus insensibly leads them on to misery, desperation, and guilt.
"But in the proposed Plan, the Insurance Offices would have only six days and a half to one in their favour the first day; so that they must begin with a much higher premium than the generality of the common people can advance, which premium must each day be very considerably increased.—These considerations would undoubtedly operate as an absolute prohibition, on far the greatest part of Lottery Insurers; beside which, the great probability of numbers insured being drawn each day, would deter even the Office Keepers from venturing to insure so deeply, or extensively, as they have been accustomed to do.
"Should it be objected, that if Insurance is thus abridged, or prohibited, tickets will not sell, and the Lottery, as a source of Revenue, must be abandoned: the following expedient may, it is apprehended, effectually obviate such an objection.—
"Let Tickets, which cannot now be legally divided below a sixteenth, be divisible down to a Sixty-fourth share, properly stamped; which regulation, while it would greatly benefit and encourage Licensed Offices, would equally discountenance illegal Gamblers; and whilst it permitted to the lower orders of the Community a fair chance of an adventure in the Lottery on moderate terms, would co-operate with the restrictions on Insurance to advance the intrinsic value, as well as the price of tickets, which every illegal Scheme evidently tends to depreciate."
The preceding Plan appeared in the Appendix to the fifth edition of this Treatise; in consequence of which the Author received the following observations and which therefore he presents as—