LOTTERY AND HAZARD.

BY DR. MICHELSEN.

"MAY you win an ambo!" is a common imprecation amongst the lower classes at Genoa. As the serial lottery was commenced in that city, the Genoese well know from experience that a trifle gained in the lottery is pretty certain to lead the winner to ruin.

It was a Genoese, Count Calzabighi, who, soon after the Seven Years' War, introduced into Prussia the state-lottery called "Numeric," from the circumstance that the prizes are awarded to the holders of a series of numbers. In a very short time the passion of lottery gambling caught the fancy of all classes of society to such an extent, that it was found necessary in engaging servants to stipulate as a condition that they should not play in the lottery, while in many noble families the prohibition was restricted to agency, the valets and grooms having usually acted as agents for the official collectors, to induce their acquaintances to buy tickets from them. At a fair held in a village in Neuenberg, a wellmeaning gentleman proposed to the assembled crowd to play for nuts instead of money. The proposal was assented to, and the community and visitors played the whole day in this novel lottery. The nut-vendors got rid of their stock, and at the close of the game, towards evening, it was found that the entire supply was in the possession of the banker. The lesson was not lost upon the villagers, and the lottery never flourished in that quarter. In France games of hazard were abolished by the Constituent Assembly, but were revived under the Directory. Mercier, bribed by the promise of managership, with a salary of ten thousand francs, advocated the reintroduction of the lottery, in the Council of the Ancients. He was in vain opposed by Boissy d'Anglas and others, who reproached him with inconsistency, and reminded him of what he had previously spoken, and written on the injurious effects of lottery, but he audaciously observed, that he now looked at the institution from a different and much higher point of view, and that "if we cannot make the people prosperous, we ought at least not to deprive them of the means and hope of becoming so."

Bonaparte, who well knew how to profit by every evil sown by his predecessors, aggravated the mischief by extending the drawings of the lottery, which had been confined to Paris alone, to Lille, Bordeaux, Lyons, and Strasburg. Besides these places, there were, in the reign of the first Napoleon, also in Belgium, thirty-six drawings annually. The total amount of stakes (in 1838) amounted in France to sixty million francs, half which belonged to Paris alone. The gross revenue derived by the state from the lottery was calculated at fifteen millions, of which six millions, or forty per cent. were consumed in the working expenses, and the remaining nine millions formed the net profit of the government. According to Ganilh's estimate, the lottery revenue in the year X. (1801)

amounted to eighteen and a half millions, and the expenses to fifteen millions, or a quarter of the total amount of stakes. This revenue was taken from the pockets of forty-five millions of lottery players. Were it possible, observes the same author, to add to it also the sums required for the police, justice, hospitals, and workhouses, as the sad consequences of the lottery institution, it would be found that the expenditure actually exceeded the amount of the stakes. A lottery manager, or collector, in one of the districts at Paris, told a friend that he had customers who staked at each drawing four hundred to five hundred francs, and that most of them were small shopkeepers in the Rue St. Denis. The collector knew them well by person, though not by name, and he frequently advanced them the amount on pledges and other securities, such advances being the most profitable source of his income. When there were only two drawings monthly, the bakers in the lower quarters of the town found that on those two days the consumption of bread was much less than usual.

As a source of revenue, lotteries are the worst modes of taxation, since they touch probably to a greater extent the hard earnings of the labouring than the income of the wealthy classes. Some excuse has been made in favour of the lotteries, by the presumption that it satisfies the passion of gambling apparently inherent in human nature, and which, if it cannot find play at home will seek lotteries abroad, to the additional injury of the state's revenue. Such an argument might at best justify an honest system of lottery, but not that of a numeric, where the chances of a prize are precarious, and hardly even possible. Acknowledging the evil consequences of the present system, a new system was proposed by Ganilh and others, according to which out of the forty-five millions of lottery-tickets distributed, twenty millions should be prizes, and the holders of the twenty-five million blanks should, with accumulated interest, be entitled to a sort of annuity at a certain age. Thus, evil habits of gambling are to be introduced under the mask of saving and economy! People play to win, but not to save, and he who wishes to economise should put his savings into the savings bank, or retrench his household expenses.

Gambling, we admit, is a natural passion in man, and it is more wise to avoid than to face the opportunity for play. Dusseulx wrote a voluminous treatise on gambling, chiefly to cure himself of that passion. He remained, however, to the last a most inveterate player. Indeed, how can truth or even probability master a passion that is content with a remote chance? Superstition is the gambler's creed, and the collectors and their agents are so fully aware of the fact, that numerous tracts on lottery-dreams are purposely and gratuitously scattered among the crowds assembled before the office-doors on the eve of each drawing. You hear there conversations chiefly turning on the last night's dreams, which the paid interpreters of the agents usually point to some lucky number in the lottery, a ticket for which is soon procured.

Faro, vingt-et-un, rouge-et-noir, roulette, &c.-are still allowed in various states of the Continent. They are farmed out to companies, and the rent forms an important item in the annual budgets. Such was the

case, also, in France until 1839, and the annual expenditure of the company was calculated as follows:

while the annual gross income to the company amounted to 9,600,000 francs, leaving for net profit 1,881,854 francs. This sort of state revenue covered a number of secret expenses. St. Crispin stole the leather from the rich to make shoes for the poor, while our neighbours across the Channel reversed the process-they skinned the poor to provide the princely prelates with red shoes. On the days of public mourning (Jan. 4 and Oct. 19), the deaths of Louis XVI. and his consort, all theatres and shops were closed, with the sole exception of the privileged gambling-houses, which were allowed to carry on their infamous trade without intermission, not to give an excuse to the company, or complaint of abridged working time. Political mournings, it seems, are more readily paid by tears than money.

But a very small portion of the immense gain of the banks is owing to the internal arrangement of the chances in their favour; it amounts to hardly five per cent. in faro, and only to three in roulette. The principal advantage of the banker lies in his own cool and passive bearing on the one hand, and in the eager, misguided passion of the player on the other. If a player were to go to work methodically, be prudent in loss and bold in gain, it is not improbable that fortune might favour him, or at least less frequently favour the bank. The main profit in certain hazard games consists in the rapid returns and circulation of the stakes. Rouge-etnoir, with its less favourable arrangement, is nevertheless more profitable to the bank than faro, with its better arrangement, while roulette is more profitable than either. In a paper read by M. Poissow, in 1829, in the Académie des Sciences, on the chances of hazard games played in the privileged gambling-houses at Paris, the author concludes with the following remark: "An habitual player, if he loses at the end of the year one-third of the capital he has employed in play, may be said to have been neither lucky nor unlucky, for he only contributes his quota to the maintenance of the establishment."

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MÉSALLIANCE.

FROM THE DANISH OF JOHAN LUDWIG HEIBERG.

BY MRS. BUSHBY.

PART THE FIFTH.

THE wedding-day was near at hand, when Count Falkenstierne one evening asked his betrothed to take a walk with him. It was a holiday, and there were many gay parties promenading in the public walks. The count was by no means so full of smiles as they were. He was this day in one of his fits of bad humour, and often absent, as if he were pondering over something. Helena asked him anxiously and affectionately what was the matter, but he answered her in a fretful and abrupt manner, and scarcely spoke except to find fault with her figure and manners, and to point out to her what she ought to be and to do. In one of the open walks of the garden of Rosenborg they met an old man, who looked like a foreigner. When he came close to them he stopped, and exclaimed in the words which once so pleased the unfortunate Petrarch:

"Coppia più bella non vede mai il sole."

The count, who did not understand what he said, became angry, and was about to give vent in French to his displeasure, when Helena pressed his arm eagerly, and smiling to the stranger, addressed a few words to him in the Italian language. The old man seemed delighted, and with many bows withdrew. When she explained to the astonished count what had been said by the stranger, his ill-temper instantaneously vanished. He was delighted at the little adventure, took several turns with Helena, evidently proud of his lovely bride, in whom he had discovered a new accomplishment.

The lovers returned home in the best possible spirits, and for the first time the count sat down voluntarily to table with the family he was soon to enter, and drank some wine, which Mr. Svendsen, however, considered a poor substitute for punch. Falkenstierne exerted his utmost powers of fascination, and was so urbane, so delicate in his flatteries, that the old father-in-law to be got into unusual good-humour with him, and at length spoke to him in a paternal way about his pecuniary affairs, and asked if he were satisfied. The count seized the propitious moment, and confessed to Svendsen that he had a debt of five thousand dollars, which weighed heavily on his mind. Helena cast a beseeching glance at her father.

"Well," said he, "I have given out more money on your account, my children, than I had reckoned on doing; but that no cloud may obscure the happiness of your wedding-day, and that you, count, may have a mind quite at ease, come to-morrow to my office, and you shall have the five thousand dollars."

The count thanked him warmly; Helena hugged the old man in her gratitude and joy, and the little party separated in the happiest of moods,

in good humour with each other and with the whole bright and beautiful world.

Two days previous to that which was fixed for the wedding, Gustavus took leave of Helena, and then went to see Falkenstierne, whom he found in very low spirits, and extremely absent. Gustavus himself found it difficult to conceal his sadness. At length the two young friends remarked upon each other's unusual melancholy.

The count said:

"You do not know how happy you are! Free as a bird you are taking wing to the beautiful place which is already as good as your

own."

"And you say this to me?" cried Gustavus, "you who are Fortune's favourite! Pray do not imitate that Englishman who put a pistol to his head and shot himself because he was too happy."

"No," replied Falkenstierne; "neither shall I imitate that other Englishman who put an end to himself because he had lost his all at play."

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"What do you mean?" asked Gustavus, in much uneasiness. "I will tell you the whole story," replied the count. "The other evening my father-in-law to be was in one of the most blessedly joyous humours that ever skipper indulged in. I saw that I could turn this to my advantage, and as he himself chose to ask me if I were easy in money matters, I answered that I was devilish uneasy, because I had a pressing debt of five thousand dollars. Helena cast her eyes upon him, and that look had more weight than any words of mine could have had. I devoutly hope her glances may always be as influential in that quarter, for he gave me these five thousand dollars."

Gustavus interrupted him with:

"Are you not touched by so much goodness ?"

"Of course I am," replied the count, carelessly.

"But you see I

thought to myself if I could only double the amount it would be a capital thing, as I should then have a good round sum over after the debt was paid. The next evening I went, as usual, to———”

Gustavus again interrupted him, crying:

"To the accursed gambling-table-and played ?"

"Yes," replied the count, "and lost two thousand dollars. It generally happens that when one has plenty of money in hand one is sure to win; and besides, I had had such a long run of bad luck I felt confident my fortune was going to change, so I determined to hazard two thousand more. But before an hour had elapsed these two thousand dollars were gone too. I became furious, and was resolved to win it all back, but I had desperate bad luck, and was so unfortunate as to lose besides three thousand dollars of my own. For a couple of days I felt as if I were out of my mind, I was miserable, and I could think of nothing but trying to win back my losses. I returned again last night to the gaming-table, and not only my very last coin went, but I became indebted, on my word of honour, to the foreign prince and Baron Milliochi. I am actually in despair at all this."

Gustavus reflected with deep sorrow on the fate which was awaiting poor Helena, and expressed with the earnestness of truth his regret for the count's misfortune.