eping a lottery-office, and who form also the most devoted
of the Papal adherents, more especially since the liberal party have set
their faces against the lottery. Common estimation too assigns a far
larger profit to the lotteries than Papal returns give it credit for,
and, I own that, from the system on which they are conducted, of which I
shall speak presently, I suspect the profit must be very much beyond the
sum mentioned; anyhow, this source of income is a very important one, and
is guarded jealously as a Government monopoly. Private gambling tables
of any kind are rigidly suppressed. If you want to gamble, you must
gamble at the tables and on the terms of the Government. The very sale
of foreign lottery-tickets is, I believe, forbidden. To this rule there
is one exception, and that is in favour of Tuscany. Between the Grand
Ducal and the Papal Governments there long existed an _entente cordiale_
on the subject of lotteries. There is no bond, cynics say, so powerful
as that of common interest; and this saying seems to be justified in the
present instance. Though the Court of Rome is at variance on every point
of politics and faith with the present revolutionary Government of
Tuscany, yet in matters of money they are not divided; and so the joint
lottery-system flourishes, as of old. The lottery is drawn once a
fortnight at Rome, and once every alternate fortnight at Florence or
Leghorn; and as far as the speculator is concerned, it makes no
difference whether his ticket is drawn for in Rome or in Tuscany, though
the gains and losses of each branch are, I understand, kept separate.
These lotteries are not of the plain, good old English stamp, in which
there were, say, ten thousand tickets, and ten prizes of different value
allotted to the holders of the ten first numbers drawn, while the
remaining nine thousand nine hundred and ninety ticket-holders drew
blanks. The system of speculation in vogue here is far more hazardous
and complicated. To any one acquainted with the German gambling-places
it is enough to say, that the Papal lottery-system is exactly like that
of a _roulette_ table, with the one important exception, that the chances
in the bank's favour, instead of being about thirty-seven to thirty-six,
as they are at Baden or Hamburgh, are in the proportion of three to one.
For the benefit of those to whom these words convey no definite meaning,
I will endeavour to explain the system as simply as I can