assisted too in acquiring for them. If
ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a
single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those
committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach,
it is that to which our lives have been devoted. To myself you have
been a pillar of support through life. Take care of me when dead, and be
assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.

Th: Jefferson.

[The following paper it is deemed proper to insert, as well
because of the explanation it contains of the reasons which
led the author to ask permission of the legislature to sell
his property by lottery, as of its otherwise interesting
character.]

THOUGHTS ON LOTTERIES.

It is a common idea that games of chance are immoral. But what is
chance? Nothing happens in this world without a cause. If we know the
cause, we do not call it chance; but if we do not know it, we say it was
produced by chance. If we see a loaded die turn its lightest side up,
we know the cause, and that it is not an effect of chance; but whatever
side an unloaded die turns up, not knowing the cause, we say it is
the effect of chance. Yet the morality of a thing cannot depend on our
knowledge or ignorance of its cause. Not knowing why a particular side
of an unloaded die turns up, cannot make the act of throwing it, or of
betting on it, immoral. If we consider games of chance immoral, then
every pursuit of human industry is immoral, for there is not a single
one that is not subject to chance; not one wherein you do not risk a
loss for the chance of some gain. The navigator, for example, risks
his ship in the hope (if she is not lost in the voyage) of gaining an
advantageous freight. The merchant risks his cargo to gain a better
price for it. A landholder builds a house on the risk of indemnifying
himself by a rent. The hunter hazards his time and trouble in the hope
of killing game. In all these pursuits, you stake some one thing against
another which you hope to win. But the greatest of all gamblers is the
farmer. He risks the seed he puts into the ground, the rent he pays for
the ground itself, the year's labor on it, and the wear and tear of his
cattle and gear, to win a crop, which the chances of too much or too
little rain, and general uncertainties of weather, insects, waste, &c.
often make a total or partial loss. These, then, are games of chance.