THE NEW LOTTERIES.
WE should not like to affirm that all the persons who propose prize competitions are knaves, or even, though this would be a more defensible proposition, that all who take part in them are fools ; but the whole business, now grown so important that its advertisements fill columns in the daily papers, certainly exhibits a vast amount of cupidity and stupidity. It is curious to trace it back to its origin. We are inclined to think that it was started by a very respectable religious periodical, which offered a prize to any one who should succeed in naming the ten best preachers in England. This competition, which we noticed at the time, was sufficiently harm- less, except eo far as it tempted competitors who were anxious to win, to give not their opinion, but what they guessed would be the opinion of the majority. Then a dignified educational journal announced that it would give a prize for the greatest number of words to be found in the letters of "education," adding an apology that a frivolous competition was suitable to holiday-time, and giving it a certain smack of learning by allowing the words to be in any two of four given languages. In both these cases, the motive was a legitimate, but perhaps not very dignified, plan for increasing circulation. Then the clergy, or rather some clergymen, took the hint. They are always at their wits' end for money for a number of laudable objects, and are sometimes not very scrupulous as to the means of obtaining it (the present writer knew many years an unlucky parson, not at all a mauvais sujet, one would have said, whose passion for decorating his church led him into altering a cheque). The plan followed was very simple. Every one was to pay, say, a shilling, and be allowed to make as many words as he could, say, out of " predestination." There would be a prize, perhaps two or three prizes, and a handsome balance out of the shillings would be devoted to some ecclesiastical necessity or luxury. This game seems not to be yet " played out." Clergymen, or their wives— the wives seem to find in the business a congenial sphere for their activity—still issue a considerable part of the advertisements ; and some seem to do business on a grand scale. The other day, an advertisement appeared from a country rectory which we could name, offering prizes to the amount of a thousand pounds. After the clergy came a number of less reputable speculators. The proprietors of quack medicines, with characteristic acute- ness, saw their opportunity. Any one who would buy, say, a box of " Zanoni's Life-Pills" (we sincerely hope that this admirable name has never been utilised), or "Bunyan Pilgrim's Corn-Plasters," would receive a coupon entitling him to join in a word-competition of which the title of these precious medicines was to be the subject. This was an admirable idea. The clientele of the quack-medicine vendor and the prize-com- petition proposer ought to be pretty nearly the same. But something simpler was wanted. Making all the possible words out of twelve or fifteen given letters is a long and troublesome business, besides being capable of being reduced to a certainty if one has a dictionary at hand. Accordingly, some ingenious person invented a competition of which the following may be taken as an example :—" HCE1T. Form one word; the name of a common character in England. Entrance, one shilling. Prizes, El, 10s., 5s., for the first three opened," or, it might be, " the last three opened," a preferable method from the analogy to a well-known kind of race. Here, it is evident, the thing is reduced to chance in almost the simplest form. " Rapax," as we may call the advertiser, might just as well offer his prizes to the first or last three letters opened by him on the given day, and containing nothing but the indispensable shilling. Would the police tolerate a lottery of this kind if it were carried on, say, in a shop, or on a stall, if chance comers were invited to drop their names into a bag at a shilling apiece, with the chance of a prize for drawing them out first, second, or third, or last P Of course they would not, and yet in such a case the prizes would be given to somebody ; in the advertisement lotteries they need not be given, and in many cases probably are not given, at all. On the contrary, the police show the greatest activity in hunting down every form of out-of-door gambling. They lay plans worthy of a commander-in-chief for the capture of two miscreants who dare to play cribbage for a penny the game, under a hedge ; but anything seems allowable if it is done by advertisement. Now, that this sort of thing is mere gambling in the competitors is manifest, and it requires very little acquaintance with the world to be sure that it is swindling with many of the promoters. Any one who deliberately pro. poses a money scheme in which he must of necessity audit his
own accounts, is at least on the high-road to dishonesty, and it would be an excess of charity to doubt that many of the advertisers have long since reached their destination. That there should be plenty of unscrupulous people and plenty of dupes is not surprising ; but we may be allowed to express, not our astonishment, for we know that the money from the foulest advertisements non old, but our disgust that respectable newspapers should give them the means of deceiving and being deceived.
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