thousand tickets, divisible into halves, quarters and eighths, according to the sum deposited weekly, would form a series of 12,500 prizes, of a total value of £27,000. At the same time, the subscriber, while having his ordinary lottery chances of these prizes, still has to his credit intact the amount which he has subscribed week by week. In England the earliest lotteries sanctioned by government were for such purposes as the repair of harbours in 1569, and the Virginia Company in 1612. In the lottery of 1569, 40,000 chances were sold at ten shillings each, the prizes being "plate, and certain sorts of merchandises." In 1698 lotteries, with the exception of the Royal Oak lottery for the benefit of the Royal Fishing Company, were prohibited as common nuisances, by which children, servants and other unwary persons had been ruined. This prohibition was in the 18th century gradually extended to illegal insurances on marriages and other events, and to a great many games with dice, such as faro, basset, hazard, except backgammon and games played in the royal palace. In spite of these prohibitions, the government from 1709 down to 1824 annually raised considerable sums in lotteries authorized by act of parliament. The prizes were in the form of terminable or perpetual annuities. The £10 tickets were sold at a premium of say 40% to contractors who resold them in retail (sometimes in one-sixteenth parts) by "morocco men," or men with red leather books who travelled through the country. As the drawing extended over forty days, a very pernicious system arose of insuring the fate of tickets during the drawing for a small premium of 4d. or 6d. This was partly cured by the Little Go Act of 1802, directed against the itinerant wheels which plied between the state lotteries, and partly by Perceval's Act in 1806, which confined the drawing of each lottery to one day. From 1793 to 1824 the government made an average yearly profit of £346,765. Cope, one of the largest contractors, is said to have spent £36,000 in advertisements in a single year. The English lotteries were used to raise loans for general purposes, but latterly they were confined to particular objects, such as the improvement of London, the disposal of a museum, the purchase of a picture gallery, &c. Through the efforts of Lord Lyttleton and others a strong public opinion was formed against them, and in 1826 they were finally prohibited. An energetic proposal to revive the system was made before the select committee on metropolitan improvements in 1830, but it was not listened to. By a unique blunder in legislation, authority was given to hold a lottery under an act of 1831 which provided a scheme for the improvement of the city of Glasgow. These "Glasgow lotteries" were suppressed by an act of 1834. Art Unions were legalized by the Art Unions Act 1846. The last lottery prominently before the public in England was that of Dethier's twelfth-cake lottery,