which we had 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.  Yet so far from being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence of man, and every one has a natural right to choose for his pursuit such one of them as he thinks most likely to furnish him subsistence.  Almost all these pursuits of chance produce something useful to society.  But there are some which produce nothing, and endanger the well-being of the individuals engaged in them, or of others depending on them.  Such are games with cards, dice, billiards, &c.