Scotland has for the moment gone mad. The preposterous and
immoral scheme of paying the debts of shareholders in the City of Glasgow Bank through a gigantic lottery has taken hold of men's minds till it is actually to be tried, and on Thursday a " large and influential meeting," with Sir R. M. Napier, of Milliken, in the chair, unanimously resolved, on the motion of Sir James Watson, to carry it out. The concern is to be called the " Bank Aid-Liquidation Scheme," and its managers, twenty gentlemen, are to issue six million £1 tickets, which are in all but name lottery tickets. Half the six millions is to be paid to the liquidators, and half "divided among the scheme share- holders in bonuses varying from £5 to £25,000." The scheme is utterly absurd from a financial point of view, as it presumes that on an average every householder in the United Kingdom will give £1 for about the tenth of a chance of getting /5 ; or if a million is devoted to heavy prizes, the 150,000th of a chance of a fortune ; but its immorality is even worse. The good folk of Scotland have, apparently, under the pressure of suffering, laid aside not only their righteousness, but their arithmetic.
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