It is not my purpose to analyze this text, or handle it as is my custom. I use it simply as a starting-point for the remarks to be made this morning in reference to the Louisiana State Lottery. You can not, however, read or hear the text without being struck with its apt and forcible descriptions of an institution whose existence in our midst we, as a city and State, have every reason to deplore. Lottery companies have an ancient beginning. One of these companies flourished in the time of Nero. He was its patron saint. You are ready at once to form your opinion of a business or institution in which such a creature as the heartless, soulless Nero was found identified.
The lottery company has been introduced into many nations. Sometimes it has been used as a source of revenue to the government. The rule has been to eject it almost as rapidly as it had entered; and where, for different reasons, it remained, it has stayed under the regret and remonstrances of the right-thinking element of the population. England soon prohibited it by law; France speedily followed suit, and so did other nations. In this country twenty-six States of the union took legal action against it, prohibiting in their Constitutions the entrance of such a gambling institution into their midst. In one state only could the lottery hope for a quiet, undisturbed settlement; and this was the cosmopolitan state of Louisiana. And yet I am happy to tell you that there was a time when even this commonwealth was constitutionally opposed to it, like her sister States. But in the year 1868 we had a Republican Legislature, of variegated complexion and remarkable moral pliability, at which time the Louisiana State Lottery was born, or, in technical terms, was duly incorporated and chartered, and started out on its wonderful career.
Doubtless, you are curious to know the objects and intents of this Company, born at so auspicious a time and of such gracious parentage. I have taken the precaution to cut from the columns of one of our leading city journals the following set notice, which daily appears in print, and which offers the very information we desire. Here it is:
"The Louisiana State Lottery Company was incorporated by the Legislature in 1868 for educational and charitable purposes."
You see at once, then, that if you had ever for a moment supposed that the incorporators of this Company had any intention of making money out of the public, you were mistaken and have grossly wronged them. Judging from the notice, the originators of the movement and the stockholders are a band of philanthropists, who, becoming distressed at the spectacle of the ignorance and want and penury existing in our state came together in the capacity of a benevolent brotherhood, with the consuming desire to do good, relieve distress and banish suffering from the land. Without doubt, the little white and green tickets which you see fluttering in the windows of various offices and stores in this city are drafts put there and waiting to be claimed by the unfortunate. If you are an uneducated man, or in financial distress, you have only to ask one the kind-hearted keepers for one of these drafts, present it to the first bank, where it will be promptly cashed, and you then, on the money received, can have yourself educated, or stock your house with provisions, just as you prefer. For you must remember, this Company was incorporated and is run strictly for educational and charitable purposes.
One thing here surprises me, and that is, that the Legislature should have granted these gentlemen only twenty-five years in which to dispense their bounty. Why put any limit to the life and labors of such a charitable organization! Is it customary or right to say to a benevolent order, You must bless the country for a few years only, and then dissolve? Is this the case with the great charity hospitals and asylums and homes of our Land? Why discriminate? You don't find a band of philanthropic gentlemen every day who are bent on spending and being spent for the good of their race. Why, then, when they do appear in a great educational and charitable work, are they cut down to the pitiful period of twenty-five years? Is it that the Legislature had a suspicion of these gentlemen? Did the two Houses think that the words "educational" and "charitable" were mere blinds and snares, or did they fear that these gentlemen, if allowed to go on without the time-limit, would finally impoverish themselves and their families in the blind zeal -- not to say, rage -- of their generosity?
The notice, which I have clipped from a certain newspaper, goes on to say that the drawings -- which is to say, the givings -- of this noble institution take place publicly in the Academy of Music, and that two prominent gentlemen supervise the whole proceeding, and can testify that it is fairly done.
Here the question at once arises in the mind, Why this publicity? Why this watching of this great benevolence by the public, and this close scrutiny by two gentlemen to see that the gifts are impartially distributed? If you conclude to give your fortune away to a community, month by month, must you do it publicly? Ought people to watch you? Is there not a doubt, a suspicion, a reproach cast upon you by the presence of two parties, who inspect -- so to speak -- you liberality and turn a microscopic eye on your bank-book? Such a course would be felt as an outrage and insult.
Hence, I insist that this benevolent order, called the Louisiana State Lottery, be allowed to turn its wheel and dispense its charities in strict secrecy, and thus save to the stockholders the expense of procuring two gentlemen to watch over their national almsgiving, and let their salaries go to swell the amount which is to educate the ignorant and provide for the necessitous of the State of Louisiana. The first thing you know, you will, by this personal scrutiny and supervision of their acts of charity, wound the delicate sensibilities of these philanthropists and kind-hearted stockholders of the Louisiana State Lottery Company, and they will retire from their labor of love in our midst. And what, then, will become of the uneducated and the impoverished classes of our city and State? About this so-called charitable institution -- the Louisiana State Lottery -- we have somewhat to say this morning.