LOTTERIES AND SWEEPSTAKES
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May I point out that your reviewer of my hook, Lotteries and Sweepstakes, entirely misses the point in saying that " The moral of the book is surely that if our forefathers, having a vast experience of lotteries . . . concluded that they did more harm than good . . . we shall do well not to question their verdict." I took considerable pains to show that the objection was not to the lotteries, but to the gambling schemes grafted on to them, and those were only possible because of the numbers of tickets being known, and every ticket being drawn, a lengthy process. These conditions do not prevail nowadays, and therefore that objection fails. If we are to have nothing which our forefathers abandoned, little advance would be made in many spheres, and among other things we should have no [From the facts so industriously collected by Mr. Ewen we drew what seemed to us the true moral. The mere differences in procedure, to which he refers, do not affect the main issue. -ED. Spectator.]
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