$15.38, for insurance:  if therefore the insurer should ask $32, there would be about $16 fraud:  in other words, you would have to contend against about 100 per cent.  The only inducement for the insurer to pursue this vile practice, in defiance of constitutions and laws, is a liberal per centage.  This varies from 30 to 70, and even 125 per cent.  Under circumstances like these, when the chances of gain are obviously so remote, it would seem incredible that any one endowed with even ordinary sagacity could be so deluded—­so desperate—­as to adventure; though, sad to relate, hundreds and hundreds in this city daily spend their little all in effecting insurance on numbers, and that, too, at the sacrifice of the common necessaries of life.

Another system of insurance, which we will proceed to analyze, is effected by what is termed a station number.  The adventurer selects a number, and declares that it will come out the first or second drawn, or in some other place, for which he pays six cents, and if the number is drawn in the order indicated, he is to receive $2.50.  To illustrate this, suppose you select a certain number, which you declare will be the third drawn; suppose also that it is a 78 number lottery, and that there are 12 drawn ballots.  In this case there are evidently 78/12 = 6.5 chances to 1 against the selected number being drawn.  It is also plain that should it be a drawn number, there are 12 chances to 1 against it being drawn in any particular order; wherefore it follows, that there are 6.5x12 = 78 chances to 1 against the selected number being the third or any other particular drawn number.  Accordingly, to equalize the chances, in case of winning you should receive 78x6 = $4.68; hence, under these circumstances the insurer gains $2.18, which is nearly 100 per cent.  Again, suppose it is a 98 number lottery, and that you pay 25 cents:  here we have 98x25 = $24.50, the sum you ought to receive in case of winning, instead of which you only receive 25/6x2.5 = $10.626; hence the insurer gains $13.975, or more than 125 per cent.

PROF.  GODDARD ON LOTTERIES.

We give below a very able memorial, from the pen of Prof.  Goddard, of Brown University, to the Legislature of Rhode Island.

The undersigned, citizens of Rhode Island, have long regarded the lottery system with unqualified reprobation.  They believe it to be a multiform social evil, which is obnoxious to the severest reprehension of the moralist, and which it is the duty of the legislator, in all cases, to visit with the most effective prohibitory sanctions.  Entertaining these convictions, the undersigned memorialists cannot withhold them from the Hon. General Assembly of Rhode Island.  They invoke the General Assembly to exercise their constitutional powers, promptly and decisively, for the correction of a long-continued, and wide-spread, and pestilent social evil.  They ask them, most respectfully