This aggregate is only to be considered as shewing the mere interchange of property from one hand to another; yet when it is recollected that the operation must progressively produce a certain loss, with not many exceptions, to all the innocent and unsuspecting adventurers either at Pharo or the Lottery, with an almost uniform gain to the proprietors; the result is shocking to reflect upon.--To individual families in easy circumstances where this unfortunate mania prevails, as well as to the mass of the people who are fascinated by the delusion of the Lottery Insurances, it is the worst of all misfortunes.--By seizing every opportunity to take advantage of this unhappy bias, it is no uncommon thing to see the pennyless miscreant of to-day become the opulent gambler of to-morrow: leaving the unhappy sufferers often no alternative but exile, beggary, or a prison; or perhaps, rendered desperate by reflecting on the folly of their conduct, to end their days by suicide,[39] while wives, children, and dependants are suddenly reduced from affluence to the lowest abyss of misery. [Footnote 39: The Gambling and Lottery transactions of one individual in this great Metropolis, are said to be productive of from ten to fifteen suicides annually.] In contemplating these vast establishments of regular and systematic fraud and depredation upon the Public, in all the hideous forms which they assume, nothing is so much to be lamented as the unconquerable spirit which draws such a multitude of the lower ranks of Society into the vortex of the Lottery. The agents in this iniquitous System, availing themselves of the existence of the delusion, spare no pains to keep it alive; so that the evil extends far and wide, and the mischiefs, distresses, and calamities resulting from it, were it possible to detail them, would form a catalogue of sufferings of which the opulent and luxurious have no conception. Of how much importance therefore is it to the Public at large, to see these evils suppressed; and above all, to have this novel System completely annihilated, by which Gambling Establishments have been formed upon commercial principles of methodical arrangements, with vast capitals employed for the most infamous and diabolical purposes. Let those who have acquired wealth in this way be satisfied with what they have gotten, and with the misery their gains have occasioned to ruined thousands: let them abstain from employing it in channels calculated to extend these evils. The Law is generally slow in its operations: but it seldom fails to overtake the guilty at last.