having appealed to the propensities of the people, and raised one million by the sale of lottery-tickets, the prizes of which were funded at four per cent. for sixteen years. The voice of the moralist continued to be raised; and the public papers show, that, directly the state sanctioned the nuisance, the evil increased tenfold, and that schemes were introduced which were a loss to all save the promoters. “What a run of lotteries we have had!” says one. “With what haste they all put in their money! What golden promises they made!” The anecdotes connected with these abominations, the grim, grotesque despair of the losers, and the eager delight of the gainers, was for the time the great entertainment of the town. Men ran with eager haste after the lotteries of merchandise; and “the people were tickled,” says a pamphleteer, “with the proposals of prodigious profits, when the proposers intended it only for themselves.” The writer concludes somewhat vehemently:—“Indeed, the people have been so damnably cheated, they have no need of dissuading, and their own sufferings are sufficient to convince them it is their interest to forbear.” The system of lotteries sanctioned and employed by the legislature was a terrible temptation to human nature. The chance, however remote, of gaining a large sum by a small risk, with the feeling of anxious and not unpleasing excitement, rendered lotteries a favorite phase of English gambling; for the voice of the people had not spoken so peremptorily the great truth, that the state must not purchase a nation’s wealth at the price of a nation’s morals. That which a government employs as an instrument of wealth, is sure to be followed by the people to a lower extent, but in a more mischievous manner. In 1772, lottery magazine proprietors, lottery tailors, lottery stay-makers, lottery glovers, lottery hat-makers, lottery tea merchants, lottery snuff-and-tobacco merchants, lottery barbers,—where a man, for being shaved and paying threepence, stood a chance of receiving £10,—lottery shoe-blacks, lottery eating-houses,—where, for sixpence, a plate of meat and the chance of sixty guineas was given,—lottery oyster-stalls,—where threepence gave a supply of oysters and a remote chance of five guineas,—were plentiful; and, to complete a catalogue which speaks volumes, at a sausage-stall in a narrow alley was the important intimation written up, that for one farthing’s worth of sausages, the fortunate purchaser might realize a capital of five shillings. Quack doctors—a class which formed so peculiar a feature in village life of old—sold medicine at a high price, giving those who purchased it tickets in a lottery purporting to contain silver and other valuable prizes.