"I am, sir, very poor, and very desirous to be otherwise: I have got ten pounds, which I design to venture in the lottery now on foot. What I desire of you is, that by your art, you will choose such a ticket for me as shall arise a benefit sufficient to maintain me. I must beg leave to inform you, that I am good for nothing, and must therefore insist upon a larger lot than would satisfy those who are capable by their own abilities of adding something to what you should assign them; whereas I must expect an absolute, independent maintenance, because, as I said, I can do nothing. 'Tis possible, after this free confession of mine, you may think I don't deserve to be rich; but I hope you'll likewise observe, I can ill afford to be poor. My own opinion is, I am well qualified for an estate, and have a good title to luck in a lottery; but I resign myself wholly to your mercy, not without hopes that you will consider, the less I deserve, the greater the generosity in you. If you reject me, I have agreed with an acquaintance of mine to bury me for my ten pounds. I once more recommend myself to your favour, and bid you adieu."
I cannot forbear publishing another letter which I have received, because it redounds to my own credit, as well as to that of a very honest footman:
"Mr. Bickerstaff, January 23, 1709/10.
"I am bound in justice to acquaint you, that I put an advertisement[43] into your last paper about a watch which was lost, and was brought to me on the very day your paper came out by a footman, who told me, that he would [not] have brought it, if he had not read your discourse of that day against avarice;[44] but that since he had read it, he scorned to take a reward for doing what in justice he ought to do. I am,
"Sir,
"Your most humble Servant,
"John Hammond."
FOOTNOTES:
[35] The first State lottery of 1710; see No. 87. Various passages in the "Wentworth Papers" (pages 126, 127, 129, 130, 148, 165) throw light upon this subject. Thus, "I hear the Million Lottery is drawing and thear is a prise of 400l. a year drawn, and Col. St. Pear has gott 5 (sic) a year; it will be hard fate if you mis a pryse that put so much in. I long tel its all drawn; they say it will be six weeks drawing" (Aug. 1, 1710). "It will be a long time first if ever, except I win ye thoussand p^d a year, for mony now adays is the raening passion" (July (?) 1710). "Some very ordenary creeture has gott 400l. a year" (Aug. 4, 1710). "Thear is a lady gave her footman in the last before this, mony for a lot, and he got five hundred a year, and she would have half, and they had a law suit, but the lawyers gave it all to him" (Aug. 7, 1710). "Betty has lost all her hopse of the Lottery, als drawn now" (Oct. 6, 1710). "You know your grandfather's Butler (?), they say he put ten thousand pd in the lottry and lost it all, and is really worth forty thousand pd" (Dec. 15, 1710). Swift refers to the drawing in September: "To-day Mr. Addison, Colonel Freind and I went to see the million lottery drawn at Guildhall. The jackanapes of blue-coat boys gave themselves such airs in pulling out the tickets, and shewed white hands open to the company to let us see there was no cheat" ("Journal to Stella," Sept. 15, 1710). See also Nos. [170], 203, and the Spectator, No.[191].
[37] "There were 150,000 tickets at £10 each, making £1,500,000, the principal of which was to be sunk, and 9 per cent. to be allowed on it for thirty-two years. Three thousand seven hundred and fifty tickets were prizes from £1000 to £5 per annum; the rest were blanks—a proportion of thirty-nine to one prize, but, as a consolation, each blank was entitled to fourteen shillings per annum during the thirty-two years" (Ashton's "Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," i. 114).
[38] The possessor of a fortune of £100,000.