738 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Spain from necessity lias mortgaged her taxes to the bank, with the 

 task of collecting them. 



Of the same general character are the state lotteries, of which 

 some few and quite important instances may still be found in action. 

 Of the immorality of these instruments there can be little doubt, and 

 there is quite as unanimous an opinion as to their inefficiency as fiscal 

 instruments. Yet it is only within very recent years that state lot- 

 teries have been discarded even in the most advanced countries. The 

 machinery of lotteries has often been modified, but, no matter how 

 altered in details, they all have appealed to the love of games of 

 chance. Adam Smith asserted that the " absurd presumption " of 

 men in their own good fortune is even more universal than the over- 

 weening conceit which the greater part of men have in their own 

 abilities.* Yet another assertion of the same writer is as true: "The 

 world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery, or 

 one in which the whole gain compensated the whole loss." Where 

 the state undertakes it, there is a profit generally assured to the 

 state, but that profit is by no means certain, and can not make good the 

 demoralization introduced among the people. State lotteries are still 

 a part of the revenue system in Italy and Austria (proper), where the 

 receipts are important, but show a decided tendency to diminish; 

 Hungary and Denmark, where they are of little moment; and in 

 Spain, where they are retained because of the general incapacity of 

 the administration to reach other and more profitable sources of 

 revenue. The experience of the State of Louisiana in connection with 

 a State lottery is too recent to require examination. It is not probable 

 that once abandoned such an instrument for obtaining money from 

 the people will be revived, save as a last resort. 



The state monopoly in the manufacture and sale of an article for 

 fiscal purposes holds a place in European countries of high impor- 

 tance, and is met elsewhere under conditions not so favorable to its 

 maintenance. As an example of the latter may be cited the colonial 

 policy of the Dutch in their possessions in the East. After the ter- 

 mination of the trading companies, the Government undertook the 

 entire control of the colonies, and sought to make them a source of 

 revenue. The natives were to be taxed, but, having little of their own 

 to be taxed, and practicing no occupation that could of its own voli- 

 tion become a profitable source of revenue, the state undertook to 

 organize industry, and, by creating an opportunity for employing the 

 labor of the natives, to receive the profits of production for its own 

 uses. The native chiefs were made " masters of industry " and col- 

 lectors of the revenue; and a certain part of the labor of the natives, 

 one day in every five, was decreed to the state. In order to derive 



* Wealth of Nations, vol. i, p. 112 (Rogers's edition). 



