necessaries of life for his young wife and baby. He was a purchaser of lottery tickets.

A lawyer called to see me, and informed me of a young lad in his employ whom he detected selling postage stamps in order that he might obtain the wherewith to buy lottery tickets.

Another gentleman, a prominent merchant, discovered one of his young men stealing from him that he might obtain money. by the proceeds of his plunder to play policy. Thus I might continue, and, from my personal experience, fill pages to come with just such sad instances as these, and yet this business, this heartless, infamous traffic, is tolerated, encouraged, and protected, in open and flagrant violation of law.

Our young men are drawn into the vortex of crime, suicide, and murder, while this hideous monster is permitted to stretch itself boldly and defiantly over the States of our Union.

But some reader asks, why do you not stop these things? I have done my part, and thereby incurred the ill will of this class of swindlers, because I have insisted that the laws shall be enforced and this fraudulent business legally stopped. Moreover, I have again and again arrested nearly every man who has presumed to advertise these illegal schemes. There are indictments now pending in the courts against them. These indictments now pending will doubtless remain untried until the decent men of this city shall rise up, and assert their rights, and demand that these outrages cease, and that the laws of the land be enforced.

In order to assist the ordinary reader to a clear understanding of all lotteries emanating or purporting to spring from the State of Kentucky, we recapitulate as follows:

All such lotteries of every name and nature (in Kentucky) are unlawful and fraudulent, because:

First. The charters under which they profess to operate were exhausted years ago-so says Court of Appeals for Kentucky.

Second. Even if each and every grant made by the Legislature of Kentucky had not been long since exhausted by the raising of the amount named, yet they are now defunct, by reason of the absolute repeal of all lottery grants by the act of April 30, 1878.

Third. All single number lotteries are frauds, and unlawful, as they never had a grant for a single number lottery at any time. The original grant was on the Ternary plan. (So says Court of Appeals, June, 1880.)

Fourth. The United States Supreme Court has affirmed the right of a legislature to repeal lottery grants; therefore the acts .of 1856 and 1878, repealing these grants, are both in full force.

The Kentucky lotteries are therefore unlawful and fraudulent, and it is worse than pouring water into a sieve with expectation of catching the same, to invest money in their tickets with hope of fairness or profit.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE LOUISIANA STATE LOTTERY.

We now come to deal with a concern that makes pretentious claims to respectability and fair dealing as justification of its existence.

It is too late in the history of this country and of the world to regard lotteries as respectable or honest. Their record has been made; their history is written. It is a record and history of fraud on the part of the promoters, and of speculation and ruin on the part of the victim. Thousands have gone down into this whirlpool, sacrificing in its vortex their honor, their character, and their position in society. To attempt at this time, to shield the lottery system from public execration, is a folly second only to that of the credulous simpleton who spends his money for the tickets with the expectation of ever getting any return.

It is argued that Washington at one time lent the use of his great name to sanction the drawing of a lottery; and to-day two men, made prominent by their official rank and position in "the late unpleasantness," sell the use of their names to add an alleged respectability to one of the most monstrous of the lottery schemes of the day.

There are many things that salt will not save.

Respectability cannot be injected in sufficient quantities, into the lottery enterprises of the present, to shield them from the public condemnation they so richly merit; and while two men are content to sell at a round figure their personal reputation as sponsors for the Louisiana State Lottery, let it be remembered that there are thousands of other gentlemen equally well known, who, were the salary offered them ten times $15,000 a year, would scorn to hold a position whereby they would be aiding and abetting an incalculable injury to their country, by corrupting the morals of the youth, beggaring hundreds of families, and sending sorrow into thousands of households.

I say, and say without fear of contradiction, that these two ex-Confederate generals, G. T. Beauregard and Jubal A. Early, by bolstering up this nefarious gambling scheme, are doing far more harm to our country than they ever did in battle, openly fighting against the forces who were contending for the grand institutions left us by our forefathers.

We are told that many of the public buildings, and charitable and educational institutions in different States, have been erected through the agency of the lottery; and the Roman Catholic Church, not content with the millions of revenue collected from rich and poor by an unrelenting system of tax and tithe, has sanctioned and fostered this method of raising money. The first lottery drawn in London was removed from a jewelry shop to a church, in order to give to its drawing an air of sanctity. But in the United States, to-day, the sanction of the Roman Catholic Church is regarded neither as evidence of absolute right nor of morality, in such matters.

This plan of bolstering up frauds with the support of figureheads, did not originate with the Louisiana State Lottery.

A few years ago, the whole country was covered with advertisements of a Public Library scheme, which was inaugurated at Louisville, Ky., and the honorable name of Gov. Bramlette was given as an assurance to the public of its faithful and honest administration. The object, as set forth, was the establishment of a library that should, in magnificence, vie with any other institution of the kind. It was to be like the ocean, boundless and free to all; where all might come and read without money and without price.

What has been the result? who have been enriched? The records inform us that there were five "gift concerts," where was realized a gross profit of $2,683,103.68. Less than five years after its inauguration, the "library" had but $2.67 to its credit; but magnificent palaces and dwellings have been reared by the managers, and stand to-day as finger-boards, pointing the way where thousands lost their money for the benefit of a select and respectable few.

One of ancient days built a monument to his military achievements with the skulls of his victims.

When an enlightened public sentiment applauds that deed, it will be time to salute with approving honors these few respectable men of to-day, who rear their palatial homes and dwellings out of the scanty earnings of the laborer-monuments of the blighted hopes of many a poor infatuated lottery victim.

Let us see how lotteries are regarded by law makers. In October, 1826, lotteries ceased to be lawful in England. The Encyclopedia Britannica says:

Lotteries, which had proved unaccountably prejudicial to public morals, by fostering among the people a propensity for gambling, and which, in a financial point of view, had yielded but a trifling amount of revenue to the State, were put an end to by a Treasury minute, which provided that, from and after that date (Oct., 1826), they should cease and determine.

The historian tells us that, as early as 1699, they were denounced in that country as a "cheat," and their agents as "pillagers of the people." In 1836, in France, a law was passed abolishing all lotteries, and confiscating the property offered by any lottery company, and punishing by fine and imprisonment those engaged in conducting them. A few years ago it became common, in Scotland, to dispose of merchandise by means of lotteries; but this was subsequently condemned by their statutes. Attempts were made to evade the laws, and especially to make the transaction resemble a legal sale, by affixing a prize of some value to every ticket; but this was punished as a fraud, even where it could be proved, that the prize equaled in value the price of the ticket.

The Congress of the United States has declared that no letters or circulars concerning a lottery shall be carried in the mails, thus closing this great thoroughfare of communication to these schemes. In May, 1880, the Supreme Court of the United States declared as follows:

That lotteries are demoralizing in their effects, no matter how carefully regulated, cannot, in the opinion of this Court, be doubted. There is now scarcely a State in the Union where they are tolerated, and Congress has enacted a special statute, the object of which is to close the mails against them.