These patents of the Restoration seem to have occasioned considerable strife between the parties who worked under them. The following verses from “The Post Boy, January 3, 1698,” afford some insight to their estimation among sensible people:—
A Dialogue betwixt the New
Lotteries and the Royal Oak.
New Lott. To you, the mother of our schools,
Where knaves by licence manage fools,
Finding fit juncture and occasion,
To pick the pockets of the nation;
We come to know how we must treat ’em,
And to their heart’s content may cheat ’em.
Oak. It cheers my aged heart to see
So numerous a progeny;
I find by you, that ’tis heaven’s will
That knavery should flourish still.
You have docility and wit,
And fools were never wanting yet.
Observe the crafty auctioneer,
His art to sell waste paper dear;
When he for salmon baits his hooks,
That cormorant of offal books,
Who bites, as sure as maggots breed,
Or carrion crows on horse-flesh feed;
Fair specious titles him deceive,
To sweep what Sl—— and T——n leave.
If greedy gulls you wou’d ensnare,
Make ’em proposals wondrous fair;
Tell him strange golden show’rs shall fall,
And promise mountains to ’em all.
New Lott. That craft we’ve already taught,
And by that trick have millions caught;
Books, bawbles, toys, all sorts of stuff,
Have gone off this way well enough.
Nay, music, too, invades our art,
And to some tune wou’d play her part.
I’ll show you now what we are doing,
For we have divers wheels agoing.
We now have found out richer lands
Than Asia’s hills, or Afric’s sands,
And to vast treasures must give birth,
Deep hid in bowels of the earth;
In fertile Wales, and God knows where,
Rich mines of gold and silver are,
From whence we drain prodigious store
Of silver coin’d, tho’ none in ore,
Which down our throats rich coxcombs pour,
In hopes to make us vomit more.
Oak. This project surely must be good,
Because not eas’ly understood:
Besides, it gives a mighty scope
To the fool’s argument—vain hope.
No eagle’s eye the cheat can see,
Thro’ hope thus back’d by mystery.
New Lott. We have, besides, a thousand more,
For great and small, for rich and poor,
From him that can his thousands spare,
Down to the penny customer.
Oak. The silly mob in crowds will run,
To be at easy rates undone.
A gimcrack-show draws in the rout,
Thousands their all by pence lay out.
New Lott. We, by experience, find it true,
But we have methods wholly new,
Strange late-invented ways to thrive,
To make men pay for what they give,
To get the rents into our hands
Of their hereditary lands,
And out of what does thence arise,
To make ’em buy annuities.
We’ve mathematic combination,
To cheat folks by plain demonstration,
Which shall be fairly manag’d too,
The undertaker knows not how.
Besides ——
Oak. Pray, hold a little, here’s enough,
To beggar Europe of this stuff.
Go on, and prosper, and be great,
I am to you a puny cheat.[440]
The “Royal-Oak Lottery,” as the rival if not the parent of the various other demoralizing schemes, obtained the largest share of public odium. The evils it had created are popularly set forth in a remarkable tract, entitled “The Arraignment, Trial, and Condemnation of Squire Lottery, alias Royal-Oak Lottery, London, 1699,” 8vo. The charges against the offender are arrayed under the forms imported by the title-page. The following extracts are in some respects curious, as exemplifying the manners of the times:—
Die Lunæ vicesimo die Martii 1698/9. Anno Regni, &c.
At the Time and Place appointed, came on the Trial of Squire Lottery, alias Royal-Oak Lottery, for abundance of intolerable Tricks, Cheats, and high Misdemeanours, upon an Indictment lately found against him, in order to a National Delivery.
About ten of the Clock, the day and year abovesaid, the Managers came into the Court, where, in the presence of a vast confluence of People of all Ranks, the Prisoner was ordered to the Bar.
Proclamation being made, and a Jury of good Cits which were to try the Prisoner being sworn, the Indictment against Squire Lottery alias Royal-Oak Lottery, was read.
The Jurors’ Names.