Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/427

399 LOTTERY BONDS. 399 that without a clause to the contrary the anticipated payment should not deprive the bondholders of the chances of lottery prizes. How are these rights to be respected? An interesting discussion arose on this point in the Municipal Council of Paris. The controversy opened in 1880 and is still pending to-day. The enormous debt which the city of Paris carries consists of lottery bonds to which is attached a profitable interest. The city wishes to pay up its debt, but does not know how to in- demnify the bondholders that are to be paid for the lottery chances of which they would be deprived. To effect this several plans have been suggested. It has been proposed to pay the bondholder for his deed, but leave him his number, which would continue to take part in the promised drawings; but this would infringe the law of 1836. As has been stated, the nature of the authorized bonds must not be changed.^ It has also been proposed to make all the drawings at once, but not to touch the prizes accruing to the holders favored by lot, except at the times when they would have been paid regularly, without the anticipated payment. It was then arranged that special acknowledgments should be given to the bondholders for the prizes which fell to them in order that they might have them discounted. But all the solutions advanced are open to objections, so that even the partisan.of the conversion of loans realized by the issue of bonds must, we think, become the adversary of the conversion of lottery bonds. Most of the questions which we have passed in review are present in many countries of Europe, as in France, where they have given rise to different arrangements. We recall only the celebrated con- versions of the lottery bonds of Brussels and Anvers. The con- version of the city of Brussels was specially authorized by a royal decree dated the 24th of October, 1886. The bondholders were paid the nominal amount of their bonds; the drawings by lot were made at once, and special acknowledgments were given to the win- ners for the prizes accruing to them, with the opportunity of having them discounted at a rate of three per cent. Italy also offers us the example of numerous conversions of lottery loans. At the time of the conversion of the lottery bonds of the city of Naples, all the bondholders were presented with a ticket bearing the num- ber of their former bond, and giving the right to be represented at tli'C normal time in the drawings of the promised prizes. 1 Supra, III.