136

PART IX.—LOTTERIES, ART UNIONS, AND INVESTMENT BONDS WITH BONUSES SECTION I.—LOTTERIES : HISTORICAL SURVEY 381. Whatever may be thought of the merits or demerits of lotteries, they have an ancient origin. The earliest written reference to them, by their assumption of the lack of any necessity to explain the practice and by the implication of general knowledge which such an assumption implies, suggests that division by lot ante-dated historical times. In its history the practice has not been wanting in honourable associations. Evidence of its employment is obtainable from Biblical sources. " And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats ; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat " (Lev. xvi, 8). As the Book of Numbers shows (Num. xxvi, 55), the allocation of land was determined by chance. It is recorded that Moses, having taken a census of the Israelites, apportioned the land west of the Jordan " for an inheritance according to the number of names to each tribe " ; to avoid jealousy the territories were divided by lot. The Roman Emperors had recourse to the practice. The Emperor Augustus (63 B.C. to a.d. 14), according to Suetonius, sold to his guests concealed articles of unequal value. Such sales, as one authority pointed out, involved the principle of equal payment, unequal prizes with chance of loss or gain, and were thereby the analogue of lotteries as they afterwards developed. 382. We are indebted to C. L'Estrange Ewen's work on " Lotteries and Sweepstakes " for these references. In that work Ewen stresses the spread of lotteries as we know them through the Low Countries —• where the records of the years 1443 to 1449 show that lotteries were then being conducted in Ghent, Utrecht, Oudenarde, Bruges, and L'Ecluse —to England. He expresses the view that they must have been tried in England in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, although no record of them remains. In 1568 a lottery was organized in England to provide finance for the improvement of the harbours. This lottery was not, apparently, a great success, and the practice of holding lotteries was not extensively adopted until the seventeenth century, when numerous private schemes were launched for the benefit of both corporations and individuals. Some of these, as Ewen comments, were of great importance and far-reaching in their beneficient influence. During this period, and by means of these lotteries, Virginia was colonized, Westminster Bridge was built, the British Empire was founded, churches, hospitals, and schools were established, and numerous