Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/432

404 404 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, are not in favor of absolute freedom in issuing lottery bonds, and recommend certain restrictions on this freedom from a legislative standpoint. M. Leroy-Beaulieu proposes to regulate the issue of lottery bonds in the following manner: i. The lowest interest should never fall below 2^%. 2. The yearly instalment for the use of prizes should not exceed the tenth of the sum needed as yearly allowance for the use of the loan. 3. The length of the period of gradual payment should not exceed seventy-five years. 4. A single prize should not exceed 150,000 francs. 5. The num- ber of yearly drawings should be four at the most. The reasoning of the adversaries of lottery loans is very simple. All that is immoral is anti-economic. Now, the essential immo- rality of the lottery is found in the lottery loan. The phase of the lottery which is so strongly condemned is the possibility of gain without work, which dazzles the eyes of the poor and needy. For the same reason lottery bonds should be condemned. The lottery, moreover, is so profoundly immoral, that it vitiates all that it touches. The ideal system of lottery bonds, a serious investment with reasonable interest, is already far exceeded. The example has been set by public authority ; the lottery in a way is to be reborn into France when the lottery ticket is disguised under the flimsy name of lottery check {bon-a-lots). This is an intermedi- ate bastard between the lottery bond and the lottery ticket. It is in principle a lottery bond, which bears no interest, of a price varying from 25 centimes to 100 francs, and it is to be paid up at the close of a certain period of time. There have been several issues of these for several years past. The combination of bon-a- lots is condemned by the best minds. The money invested by the purchaser of a bon-a-lots may be considered as lost to him for the time, since it bears no interest. Lottery bonds, even though they bear an appreciable interest, may still be always condemned from another point of view. They give rise to speculations economically reprehensible, such as we have studied above,-^ and which no restrictive law can effectively repress; whatever exertions are made, as long as lottery bonds exist, whatever the price may be, speculation will always arise which by clever arrangement will manage to place within the reach of modest means the possibility of taking part in the lottery at a small figure. 1 Supra, III.