These principles will displease those who have made it a rule with themselves to transmit to their inferiors the tyranny they suffer from their superiors. Beccaria.

LAWS, OBSCURITY OF.

If the power of interpreting laws be an evil, obscurity in them must be another, as the former is the consequence of the latter. This evil will be still greater if the laws be written in a language unknown to the people; who, being ignorant of the consequences of their own actions, become necessarily dependent on a few, who are interpreters of the laws, which, instead of being public and general, are thus rendered private and particular. What must we think of mankind, when we reflect that such is the established custom of the greatestpart of our polished and enlightened Europe? Crimes will be less frequent in proportion as the code of laws is more universally read and understood; for there is no doubt but that the eloquence of the passions is greatly assisted by the ignorance and uncertainty of punishments.

Hence it follows, that, without written laws, no society will ever acquire a fixed form of government in which the power is vested in the whole and not in any part of the society; and in which the laws are not to be altered but by the will of the whole, nor corrupted by the force of private interest. Experience and reason shew us, that the probability of human traditions diminishes in proportion as they are distant from their sources. How then can laws resist the inevitable force of time if there

there be not a lasting monument of the social compact? Beccaria.

LITTLE-GOES.

Several of the keepers of insurance offices, during the interval of the drawing of the English and Irish lotteries, have invented and set up private lotteries, or wheels, called by the nickname of little goes, containing blanks and prizes, which are drawn for the purpose of establishing a ground for insurance; the fever in the minds of the lower order of the people is thus kept up, in some measure, all the year round, and produces incalcuJable mischiefs; and hence the spirit of gambling becomes so rooted from habit, that no domestic distress, no consideration, arising either with the frauds that are practised, or the number of chances that are against them, will operate as a check upon their minds.

In spite of the high price of provisions and of the care and attention of the legislature in establishing severe checks and punishments for the purpose of preventing the evil of lottery insurances, these criminal agents feel no want of customers; their houses and offices are not only extremely numerous all over the metropolis, but in general high-rented; exhibiting the appearance of considerable expence, and barricadoed in such a manner, with iron doors and other contrivances, as in many instances to defy the arm of the law to reach them.

In tracing all the circumstances connected with this interesting subject, with a view to the discovery of the cause of the great encouragement which these lottery insurers receive, it appears that a con

siderable

siderable proportion of their emolument is derived from menial servants in general, all over the metropolis; but particularly from the pampered male and female domestics in the houses of men of fashion and fortune; who are said, almost without a single exception, to be in the constant habit of insuring in the English and Irish lotteries.

This class of menials, being in many instances cloathed as well as fed by their masters, have not the same calls upon them as labourers and mechanics, who must appropriate at least a part of their earnings to the purpose of obtaining both food and raiment.

With a spirit of gambling rendered more ardent than prevails in vulgar life, from the example of their superiors and from their idle and dissipated habits, these servants enter keenly into the lottery business; and when ill luck attends them, it is but too well known that many are led, step by step, to that point where they lose sight of all moral principle. Impelled by a desire to recover what they have lost, they are induced to raise money for that purpose by selling or pawning the property of their masters, wherever it can be pilfered in a little way, without detection; till at length this species of peculation, by being rendered familiar to their minds, generally terminates in more atrocious crimes.

Upon a supposition that one hundred thousand families in the metropolis keep two servants upon an average, and that one servant with another insures only to the extent of twenty-five shillings each in the English, and the same in the Irish, lottery, the aggregate of the whole will amount to HALF A MILLION STERLING!

Astonishing as this may appear at first view, it is believed that those who will minutely examine into

the

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the lottery transactions of their servants will find the calculation by no means exaggerated; and when to this are added the sums drawn from per sons in the middle ranks of life, as well as from the numerous classes of labourers and artisans who have caught the mania, it ceases to be a matter of wonder, that so many sharpers, swindlers, and cheats, find encouragement in this particular department.

If servants in general, who are under the controul of masters, were prevented from following this abominable species of gambling, and if other expedients were adopted, a large proportion of the present race of rogues and vagabonds who follow this infamous trade would be compelled to become honest; and the poor would be shielded from the delusion which impels them to resort to this deceit. ful and fraudulent expedient; at the expence sometimes of pledging every article of houshold goods, as well as the last rag of their own and their chil dren's wearing apparel, not leaving even a single change of raiment !

This view of a very prominent and alarming evil, known to exist from a variety of facts well esta. blished, and evinced, among others, by the pawnbrokers' shops overflowing with the goods of the labouring poor, during the drawing of the three lotteries, ought to create a strong desire on the part of all masters of families, to exert their utmost endeavours to check this destructive propensity, and to prevent, as far as possible, those distresses and mischiefs which every person of humanity must deplore. The misery and loss of property which springs from this delusive source of iniquity is certainly very far beyond any idea that can be formed of it by the common observer.

In consequence of a very accurate inquiry which has been made, and of information derived from different sources, it appears that fraudulent lottery insurances have not diminished. The offices are numerous all over the metropolis, and are supposed to exceed four hundred of all descriptions; to many of which there are persons attached, called Morocco Men, who go about from house to house among their former customers, and attend in the back parlours of public-houses, where they are met by customers who make insurances. It is calculated that at these offices, exclusive of what is done at the licensed offices, premiums for insurance are received to the amount of eight hundred thousand pounds during the Irish lottery, and above one million during the English; upon which it is calcu. lated that they make from 15 to 25 per cent. profit. This infamous confederacy was estimated, during the English lottery of the year 1796, to support about two thousand agents and clerks and nearly seven thousand five hundred Morocco Men, includ ing a considerable number of hired armed ruffians and Bludgeon Men. These were paid by a general association of the principal proprietors of these fraudulent establishments, who regularly met in committee, in a well-known public-house in Oxford-Market, twice or thrice a week, during the drawing of the lottery, for the purpose of concerting measures to defeat the exertions of the magistrates, by alarming and terrifying, and even forcibly resisting, the officers of justice, in all instances where they could not be bribed by pecuniary gra tuities; to effect which last purpose, neither money nor pains were spared; and the wretched agents of these unprincipled miscreants were, in many cases, prepared to commit murder, had attempts been

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made