Chance and Luck

Long experience has shown that men possessed with the gambling spirit (ninety out of a hundred if the truth were known) are not to be deterred from venturing small sums in order to win large fortunes, even by the clearest evidence that the price they have to pay is an unfair one. The Government lotteries in this country early put this matter to the test. Having decided on a certain set of money prizes and a certain number of tickets, the Government did not offer the tickets to the public for more than they were worth, but for what they would fetch. They seldom failed to obtain from contractors at least 16£ for a ticket mathematically worth 10£. And the contractors not only showed by offering these sums their faith in human credulity, but practically proved the truth of their faith by disposing of their tickets for 5£ or 6£ more than they had paid Government for them. Thus the Government occupied a very favorable position. For every million they offered in prizes they received more than 1,600,000£; yet they asked no one to pay an unfair price. They left the contractors to do that, who were not only willing, but anxious to undertake the task of shearing the public. Nor were the public less ready to be plundered than the contractors were to plunder them. Government had to protect the public, or rather tried to protect them, from the contractors, not by putting a limit to the price which contractors might obtain for tickets, but by endeavoring to prevent men of small means from buying tickets in shares of less than a certain value. Of course, the laws made for this purpose were readily and systematically broken. The smallest sums were risked, and the only effect of the laws against such purchases was that higher prices had to be paid to cover the risk of detection. We learn that 'all the efforts of the police were ineffectual for the suppression of these illegal proceedings, and for many years a great and growing repugnance was manifested in Parliament to this method of raising any part of the public revenue. At length, in 1823, the last Act that was sanctioned by Parliament for the sale of lottery-tickets contained provisions for putting down all private lotteries, and for rendering illegal the sale in this kingdom of all tickets or shares of tickets in any foreign lottery -- which latter provision is to this day extensively evaded.' This was written forty years ago, but might have been written today.

The simplest, and in many respects the best, form of lottery is that in which a number of articles are taken as prizes, their retail prices added together, and the total divided into some large number of parts, the same number of tickets being issued at the price thus indicated. Suppose, for instance, the prizes amount in value to 200£, then a thousand tickets might be sold at 4s. each, or 4,000 at 1s. each, or a larger number at a correspondingly reduced price. In such a case the lottery is strictly fair, supposing the prizes in good saleable condition. The person who arranges the lottery gains neither more nor less than he would if he sold the articles separately. There may be a slight expense in arranging the lottery, but this is fully compensated by the quickness of the sale. The arrangement, I say, is fair; but I do not say it is desirable, or even that it should be permissible. Advantage is taken of the love of gambling, innate in most men, to make a quick sale of goods which otherwise might have lain long on hand. Encouragement is given to a tendency which is inherently objectionable if not absolutely vicious. And so far as the convenience is concerned of those who collectively buy (in fact) the prizes, it manifestly cannot be so well suited as though those only had bought who really wanted the articles, each taking the special article he required. Those who buy tickets want to get more than their money's worth. Some of them, if not all, are believers in their own good luck, and expect to get more than they pay for. They are willing to get, in this way, something which very likely they do not want, something therefore which will be worth less to them in reality than the price for which it is justly enough valued in the list of prizes.