sacred text, a work all important and necessary, no one will complain. But this is not the work of the church, or of the ministry as a whole.

A more urgent labor is on our hands; men are perishing, and God forbid that they should be amused with trifles. We possess the charm whose magic power dissolves away sin, and restores the soul to its union with God. If we fail to use it, we betray our Master, and the souls of those for whom he died.

ARTICLE II.

LOTTERIES AND RAFFLES.

THESE are schemes for a systematic disposition of money and valuables by chance, and are devised for amusement, and for excitement, and for profit. They are presumed to rule out the intervention of human skill and planning, so that it can not be determined and known in advance who shall gain or lose by a venture in them. The schemes, by their structure, foreordain certain results of loss and gain to the persons sharing in them, but on whom these results shall fall is left to the fortune, chance or hap, that constitute the very essence of the device. The result may be obtained by using dice, cards, tickets, numbers, wheels, and various other means.

The act itself goes under the general term of Lottery, though it has many other names, among which the more modern, popular and graceful is Raffle. Whatever the name, the thing done is substantially the same. It is "a game of hazard in which small sums are ventured for the chance of obtaining a larger value, either in money, or in other articles." The Raffle, as distinguished from the Lottery, has not perhaps so broad a meaning. In it each of a number of persons deposits or stakes a part of the value of something for the chance of getting by lot the whole of that thing. The impression of the word Raffle has, moreover, a something in it more refined and

graceful and dainty, than pertains to Lottery. The latter is associated in the popular mind, historically and necessarily, with trick, dishonor, dishonesty, gaming with desperate passion, ruined fortunes and families, and gross immoralities. This new court name, pleasing polite ears with the accent of its Italian and French pedigree, throws a vail over what is so justly offensive in the old term. But substantially and practically the two words mean one and the same thing, and so the statute of Massachusetts on games of chance makes them synonymes.

Many entering into the charitable raffle scheme do not regard it as setting up and drawing in a lottery, because the name of the thing is different. But the law in the different States does not discriminate between the two. Massachusetts and New York and some of the other States use the term raffle in their statutes, forbidding games of chance, as synonymous and interchangable with lotteries. Others cover the words lottery and raffle both and alike in their definition of a game of chance and of a ticket or right in the same. The language of the statute of Ohio will serve as an example of this legal defining that makes the lottery and raffle identical. "If any person shall open, set on foot, carry on, promote, make or draw, publicly or privately, any lottery or scheme of chance of any kind or description, by whatever name, style or title the same may be denominated and known," etc.

In the principles on which the two are devised and managed, in the gaming feelings excited, and in the general results on those interested, the Lottery and the Raffle are near enough to identity to be treated as one and the same thing.

It will best serve the purposes of this paper if we first sketch, in brief, the history of these games as related to legislation and state policy in Great Britain, France, and our own country.

Private lotteries were established in England as early as 1569, and their influence on the business habits and morals of the people began so long ago, three centuries, to be made known by experience. In 1612 one was granted by James the First for the benefit of the Virginia Colony, which yielded twenty-nine thousand pounds. In 1659 the English government established one for its own benefit in repairing the harbors of the realm, and sold forty thousand tickets at ten shillings

each. Some of the prizes were many thousands of dollars each, and the temptations to buy were great. The success of a few with prizes, and the disappointment of many with blanks, stirred a popular and general in such hopes and hazards. neglected, the earnings of the forts of home were sunk in the sprung up. Treachery, fraud, and the gambling tricks common to the game, debauched the managers; while petty thefts of servants and clerks, and embezzlement of funds by treasurers and agents were resorted to for ticket money. The government became alarmed for the safety of public morals and industrious habits, and so in view of the wide and deep corruption from these schemes, it prohibited all private lotteries in 1698. "Notwithstanding which," says the historian, referring to this act of Parliament and its penalty of five hundred pounds, "the disposition to fraud on the one hand, and for adventure on the other, continued to prevail, and small lotteries were carried on under the denomination of sales of gloves, fans, cards, plate," etc. Here we have the illegal original of our illegal modern Gift Enterprises, and the sale of tickets of admission to something very common or low, with a chance of drawing a set of tin tea-spoons, a brass watch or a stick of candy.

profound passion for indulgence Steady and profitable toil was poor and often the scanty commany private lotteries that now

Speaking of this state of morals in England, the writer continues: "Children have robbed their parents, servants their masters, suicides have been committed, and almost every crime that can be imagined has been occasioned either directly or indirectly through the baneful influence of lotteries."

Still later, and during the reign of Queen Anne, [1702-14]. Parliament labored farther to suppress them, as promoting immorality, and declared them to be "public nuisances." And under the Third George, [1760-1820], those who sold tickets without license were declared by statute [42d George III.] to be "rogues and vagabonds." Yet the government was not fully informed and awake as to the evil. They still thought hat the government could practice the wrong under restrictions and watching, and so avoid the abuses and immoral influence of private schemes. Therefore for revenue and other public

uses Parliamentary lotteries were established. This was a concession by the government that the thing was not an evil in itself, and necessarily wrong. Then private companies pressed for the same privilege, and established lotteries in contempt of the law. Then government undertook to regulate the popular passion by a License Law, adopted in 1778. The price of a license was put at fifty pounds. At once private schemes fell off from the number of four hundred to fifty-one.

Among others these two conditions were affixed to a license; that a company should not do any office work after eight o'clock in the evening, or sell any tickets in Cambridge and Oxford. Why forbid office hours at night, except that the lottery practices and works of darkness are very apt to join hands and become one? And why forbid the sale of tickets among the scholars of Cambridge and Oxford, except that lotteries are corrupting and dangerous to the young?

nue.

Still this demoralizing system and the struggles to regulate it, a vain endeavor, passed over into the present century. The English government was then deriving from licensing it about three and three fourths millions of dollars per annum, as rèveAt the same time the English people were oppressed by the immorality, vices and crimes that the system was producing. Then Committees in the House of Commons were appointed to make full investigations and report. "In 1808 the Reports of a Committee of the House of Commons disclosed," says an eminent English authority, "a dreadful scene of vice and misery brought on by lotteries, and recommended their abolition, or at least that they should be put under regulations." The language of the Committee itself is stronger than this, and we quote their own words:

"The foundation of the lottery system is so radically vicious . . under no system of regulations, which can be devised, will it be possible for Parliament to adopt it as an efficacious source of revenue, and at the same time divest it of all the evils of which it has hitherto proved so baneful a source."

The struggle to meet the evil now opened again with new vigor and nearer to a hopeful point of attack, as it was at the "radically vicious foundation of the lottery system." Still the remaining struggle was long, continuing for twenty years. It

is astonishing to see how tenaciously and with how much vitality a popularized evil, known, felt and confessed to be an evil, will cling to a community. Such was the array of immorality, idleness and criminality justly proved on this system that Parliament refused any act of incorporation for a lottery after 1823, and forbade the sale of tickets in foreign lotteries within the realm under high penalties. And so having "proved eminently prejudicial to public morals by fostering among the peoa propensity for gambling," the last legal lottery in England came to an end October 18, 1826.

We need not detail the steps for their suppression in France. They were similar to those in England, only that as French morals are much lower than the English the effects of the system in France were more violent and offensive and deadly against public virtue. The lottery was legally abolished in France in 1836. A single fact will indicate and suggest a wide gathering of results. The following year the deposits by the poor in the Savings Banks exceeded the amount of the last lottery year by more than half a million of dollars.

Legislation in the United States on lotteries and raffles has been quite as marked and much more prompt and to the point than in the mother country. As these schemes were in much popularity in England during our colonial period, and when we were instituting sovereign state governments, it was a matter of course that they should come into favor here.

But our practical fathers early saw their injurious effects, and the Congress, during the Revolution, gave the key note to the general and prohibitory legislation that followed in the most of the States. The American Congress adopted the following resolution, October 12th and 16th, 1778:

"Whereas, True religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness,

"Resolved, That it be, and it is hereby, earnestly recommended to the several States to take the most effectual measures for the encouragement thereof, and for the suppressing

gaming, and such other diversions as are productive of idleness, dissipation, and a general depravity of principles and manners."

We have not at hand the dates of the absolute prohibition of these vicious schemes in the several States that we are about to