It was in vain that the smaller lotteries were put down; they only gave way to an evil which preyed upon the very vitals of English society. Insurance, an art upon which hundreds grew rich, while hundreds of thousands grew poor, was commenced with terrible success. Those who were unable to buy tickets, paid a certain sum to receive a certain amount if a particular number came up a prize. A plan like this was available for all, as the amount could be varied to the means of the insurer. It is almost impossible to describe the many iniquities, the household desolation, the public fraud, and the private mischief, which resulted from insuring. Wives committed domestic treachery; sons and daughters ran through their portions; merchants risked the gains of honorable trade. “My whole house,” wrote one, “was infected with the lottery mania, from the head of it down to my kitchen-maid and post-boy, who have both pawned some of their rags that they might put themselves in fortune’s way.” The passions and prejudices of the sex were appealed to. Lovers were to strew their paths with roses; husbands were plentifully promised, and beautiful children were to adorn their homes through the lottery. And all these glories were promised when Adam Smith declared, as an incontrovertible fact, that the world never had, and never would, see a fair lottery. So great were the charms of insuring, while the chances were so small, that respectable tradesmen, in defiance of the law, met for this illegal purpose, on the following day to that on which some of their body had been taken handcuffed before a magistrate. The agents were spread in every country village, and the possession of a prize was an absolute curse to the community. Its effects were witnessed alike in the shock it gave to industry, and the love of gambling it spread among the people. It is due to those whose voices were lifted up against these abominations to say, that their appeals to the good feeling of the government were incessant; but the state replied in that language which is so unanswerable when held by a firm government, that the necessities of the state overbalanced the evils of the lottery. Nor could ignorance be pleaded of its fatal effects. The domestics of the senators themselves purchased shares with their masters’ money; and members of the lower and upper house were unable to resist the fascinations of the game they condemned. The most subtle language was not wanting to support the cause. Scripture was used to defend it; and as the Bible was perverted by the supporters of the slave-trade, and lately by the discoverers of the virtues of chloroform, so was it now wrested to prove the antiquity and sanctity of lotteries. “By lot,” they said, “it was determined which of the goats should be offered to Aaron. By lot the land of Canaan was divided. By lot Saul was marked out for the kingdom. By lot Jonah was discovered to be the cause of the storm.”