Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1926. MORALITY & EXPEDIENCY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 135, 4 December 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1926. MORALITY & EXPEDIENCY

The year 1926, which has seen provision made for a betting tax in a British Budget for the first time, has also included the centenary of a still more remarkable event of the same character. Throughout the last ninety years of the 18th Century successive Chancellors of the Exchequer had found in State lotteries an easy and lucrative source of revenue^ It was not to be expected that the England of Godolphin and Walpole, of Grafton and Fox, would see anything wrong in it, but the quickened social conscience of the 19th Century soon began asking questions and raising objections. When the usual Lottery- Bill was before Parliament in 1818 to authorise a scheme under which £606,200 was to be given in prizes and the net profit of the State was to be £212,551 16s Bd, the rising disgust of the nation was expressed by Mr. Parnell in a "protest against great questions of justice and morality being sacrificed to expediency." The contrast between both the high private character of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the excellence of some of his measures on the one hand and the demoralising effects of this feature of his finance on the other enabled Mr. Parnell to support his protest with a thrilling epitaph :—

Here lies the Bight Hon. Nicholas Vansittart, once Chancellor of the Exchequer; the patron of Bible Societies, the builder of Churches, a friend to the education of the poor, an encourager of Savings Banks, and—a ' supporter of Lotteries!

The contrast between the livings Banks, to which Vansittart had helped in the previous year to give the legal shape that they still substantially retain, and the State lotteries, which he also championed, was particularly striking. But both on this occasion andt in the following year (1819), when Mr. Lyttelton attacked the system as encouraging "a spirit of gambling injurious in the highest degree to the morals of the people" and tending to "diminish the permanent sources of the public revenue" by weakening the habits of industry, Vansittart stood firm.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer saw no reason for abandoning so lucrative a branch of the revenue without having some equivalent held put by which the public would derive an equal benefit.

And a substantial majority of the House of Commons agreed with him. As the Government's annual profit from the lotteries averaged £346,765 during the years 1793-1824, when the gross revenue ranged between £13,000,000 and £62,000,000, the financial argument was certainly a strong one. But the moral leaven continued to work, and a few years later it had leavened the whole lump. The occasion was celebrated in another epitaph, which was in part as follows:—

In Memory of THE STATE LOTTERY, the last of a long line whose origin in England commenced in the year 1569 which, after a series of tedious complaints, EXPIRED on the 18th day of October, 1826. During a period of 257 years, the family flourished under the powerful protection of the British Parliament. .... The British Parliament being at length convinced of their mischievous tendency, . His Majesty GEORGE IV. on the 9th of July, 1823, pronounced sentence of condemnation on the whole race; from which time they were almost NEGLECTED BY THE BRITISH PUBLIC. . The chronology of the system which thus expired "unregretted by any virtuous mind" on the 18th October, 1826, is correctly stated in this epitaph. Its first recorded appearance in England was in 1569, when "a verie rich Lotterie Generall, | without any blancks" and with a first prize of £5000 was "erected by her majesties order" to promote "the reparation of the havens and strength of the Realme, and towardes such other good publique good workes." The importance of the occasion was indicated by the proclamation of a close season of "seven whole -days" within which "all maner of persons" were free to arrange their investments without molestation or arrest "for any maner of offence, saving treason, murder, pyracic, or any other felonie, or for breach of hir Majesties peace." But the 400,000 lots of 10s each were nevertheless not rushed, and great pressure had to be brought to bear upon local authorities all over the Kingdom before the long-delayed scheme was ripe. The leisurely pace of the period is further illustrated by the fact that the drawing, which began at the west door of St. Paul's on the 11th Jan-

vary, 1569, was continued without a break, day or night, till the 6th May. For the next public lottery, wheih was held in aid of "the present plantation of English Colonies in Virginia" in 1612, three weeks sufficed, but it was not until 1809 that the opportunities both for frenzy and for fraud were abridged by completing the drawing in a single day.

Of the Virginian lottery we are told that it was "so plainely carryed and honestly performed that it gave full satisfaction to all persons" —a result doubtless attributable to the continuous presence of "divers worshipfull Knights and Esquiers, accompanied with sundry grave discreet Cittizens." In 1683 the conduct of- the lottery for Prince Rupert's jewels, , which included prizes ranging in value from £8000 to £100, was specially safeguarded by the presence of the King himself. His Majesty (Charles II.) was to act as scrutineer, and a child appointed by him or by "the Adventurers" was to do the drawing. A £300,000 lottery which was organised in 1753 to finance the housing of the consolidated libraries which formed the nucleus of the British Museum was under less exalted but apparently adequate auspices. The managers and trustees were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, each of whom was to receive £100 for his trouble. Yet even the leading figures of the Church, the Courts, and the Legislature were not equal to the occasion. One of their subordinate trustees was guilty of a fraud which was tantamount to embezzlement, and was convicted and fined £1000, an amount which was supposed to represent about 2\ per cent, of his booty, and which he immediately paid into Court. The Church is again brought into amusing relation with the system a few years later. A lady in Holborn who had been presented by her husband with a ticket for the lottery of 1767 was so determined to miss no chances that she induced the parson to announce on the Sunday before the drawing that "the prayers of the congregation are desired for a person engaged in a new undertaking"— which was surely giving her an unfair advantage unless the suppression of the name may be taken to have given the prayers a general application.

The appointment of a child to help Charles 11. with the Prince Rupert ballot invites attention to another singular incident of the system. To avoid the corruption to which adults were liable Blue Coat Boys were appointed to do the drawing in 1710, and the practice was continued for many years. But corruption did not spare the boys either, and in 1775 the managers were solmenly enjoined in*an Order issued by th» Lords of the Treasury to examine every boy before he went on duty in order

"to soe that the bosoms and sleeves of his coat bo closely buttoned, his pockets sewed up, and his hands examined; and that, during the time of his boing on duty, he shall keep his left hand in his girdle behind him, and his right hand open, with his fingers extended."

As a further precaution no boy was to be allowed to know in advance "when it will be his turn to go to either wheel." Yet in spite of all precautions the 18th October, 1826, marked the end, as the "Observer" says, of "a long chapter in our history, on every page of which are records of greed, lawlessness, fraud, and ruin"—a sordid story partially redeemed by rich streaks of humour and vivid glimpses of a long-van-ished yiasl. ■