These pernicious Lotteries continued till the end of the eighteenth century, when they were almost every where abolished and forbidden. To the honour of the Hanoverian government, no Lotto was ever introduced into it, though many foreigners offered large sums for permission to cheat the people in this manner. Those who wish to see the prohibitions issued against the Lotto, after making a great part of the people lazy, indigent, and thievish, may find them in Schlozer’s Staats-Anzeigen,
Si son exécrable mémoire
Parvient à la postérité,
C’est que le crime, aussi bien que la gloire,
Conduit à l’immortalité.[499]
The Last Lottery in England.
Elia says, in the “New Monthly Magazine,”—“The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last possible moment, during the whole of which intervening period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up in his desk—and was not this well worth all the money? Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during two or three months? ‘Crede quod habes, et habes,’ and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing along Cheapside saw the figures 1069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window of a Lottery office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this discovery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to walk round St. Paul’s, that he might consider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to his wife and family; out upon repassing the shop, he observed that the number was altered to 10,069; and, upon inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his ticket was blank, and had only been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually calmed his agitation; but he always speaks of himself as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten minutes’ walk round St. Paul’s was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. A prize thus obtained has moreover this special advantage;—it is beyond the reach of fate, it cannot be squandered, bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it, friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up; it bears a charmed life, and none of woman-born can break its integrity, even by the dissipation of a single fraction. Show me the property in these perilous times that is equally compact and impregnable. We can no longer become enriched for a quarter of an hour; we can no longer succeed in such splendid failures; all our chances of making such a miss have vanished with the Last of the Lotteries.
“Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact; and sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical configurations and mysterious stimulants to Lottery adventure, will be disfurnished of its figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of numbers.
“And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its pristine glory when the Lottery professors shall have abandoned its cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last, who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art; who cajoled and decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of their advertisements, by devices of endless variety and cunning; who baited their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost stories, crim-cons, bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy and sorrow to catch newspaper-gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be encouraged? Verily, the abolitionists have much to answer for!”
Here, at last, ends the notices respecting the Lottery, of which much has been said, because of all depraving institutions it had the largest share in debasing society while it existed: and because, after all, perhaps, the monster is “only scotched, not killed.”