An Organ Lottery.
In 1737, Horace Walpole (Lord Orford) says, “I am now in pursuit of getting the finest piece of music that ever was heard; it is a thing that will play eight tunes. Handel and all the great musicians say, that it is beyond any thing they can do; and this may be performed by the most ignorant person; and when you are weary of those eight tunes, you may have them changed for any other that you like. This I think much better than going to an Italian opera, or an assembly. This performance has been lately put into a Lottery, and all the royal family chose to have a great many tickets, rather than to buy it, the price being I think 1000l., infinitely a less sum than some bishopricks have been sold for. And a gentleman won it, who I am in hopes will sell it, and if he will, I will buy it, for I cannot live to have another made, and I will carry it into the country with me.”
In the State Lottery of 1739, tickets, chances, and shares were “bought and sold by Richard Shergold, printer to the honourable the commissioners of the Lottery, at his office at the Union Coffee-house over and against the Royal Exchange, Cornhill.” He advertised, that he kept numerical books during the drawing, and a book wherein buyers might register their numbers at sixpence each; that 15 per cent. was to be deducted out of the prizes, which were to be paid at the bank in fifty days after the drawing was finished; and that “schemes in French and English” were given gratis.[458]
The per centage to be deducted from the prizes in this lottery occasioned the following
Epigram.
This lottery can never thrive,
Was broker heard to say,
For who but fools will ever give
Fifteen per cent to play.
A sage, with his accustomed grin,
Replies, I’ll stake my doom,
That if but half the fools come in
The wise will find no room.[459]