426

SPECIAL PUBLIC EVILS.

[Part VI.

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modated to the poor as well as to the rich; to the concealedspeculator no less than to the avowed libertine. The subdivisionof chances is so minute as even to include, among the adven-turers, the day-laborer, the apprentice to a trade, and the servantgirl. But it does not stop here. With its own undistinguishingspirit, it sacrifices older victims, and ascends into higher walks.It penetrates into situations which would prove impervious to thecontaminating influences of ordinary gaming. While, in commongaming, the personal superintendence which is necessary mustexpose the infamy of participation, the odium of holding ticketsmay be prevented by committing to another the charge of thepurchase. It is thus, that persons claiming respectability havebeen known to engage in lottery speculations without incurringthe disgrace, which, in all well-regulated communities, is aittachedto the practice of gaming. In truth, want of consideration hassometimes led persons, whose morals were irreproachable, inother respects, to purchase tickets, and thus to countenance asystem which has brought multitudes to shame and ruin.

Again, the risks are greater in the lottery than in other gaming.The chance of the latter may be as one to one, or greater, ac-cording to the skill of the player ; but the hazards of the formerare frequently in the proportion of one to a thousand or evenmore. In the one, the loss of fortune may ensue in a singlenight ; but in the other, the excitements of hope and the agonyof disappointment, may alternate in rapid succession, and theunhappy adventurer may have a protracted and most painfulstruggle, before he can know the result of the contest. In themean time, he is rendered a useless, not to say a pernicious,member of society ; his principles are contaminated by familiarassociation with infamy and guilt, and his habits debauched byindulging in the excesses into which he has most probably beendrawn. The life of a regular gamester may possibly admit ofuseful occupation in the intervals of play. But the lottery ad-venturer broods by day and night over his tickets, his imagina-tion is excited with the grand idea of obtaining the capital prize,and his mind is held in that state of anxious suspense, which per-mits nothing to divert it from the one absorbing object of itscontemplation. He is soon incapable of a higher effort than