possible, after this free confession of mine, you may
think I don't deserve to be rich; but I hope you'll likewise
observe, I can ill afford to be poor. My own opinion is, I am well
qualified for an estate, and have a good title to luck in a
lottery; but I resign myself wholly to your mercy, not without
hopes that you will consider, the less I deserve, the greater the
generosity in you. If you reject me, I have agreed with an
acquaintance of mine to bury me for my ten pounds. I once more
recommend myself to your favour, and bid you adieu."

I cannot forbear publishing another letter which I have received,
because it redounds to my own credit, as well as to that of a very
honest footman:

"MR. BICKERSTAFF, _January 23, 1709/10._

"I am bound in justice to acquaint you, that I put an
advertisement[43] into your last paper about a watch which was
lost, and was brought to me on the very day your paper came out by
a footman, who told me, that he would [not] have brought it, if he
had not read your discourse of that day against avarice;[44] but
that since he had read it, he scorned to take a reward for doing
what in justice he ought to do. I am,

"Sir,
"Your most humble Servant,
"JOHN HAMMOND."

[Footnote 35: The first State lottery of 1710; see No. 87. Various
passages in the "Wentworth Papers" (pages 126, 127, 129, 130, 148, 165)
throw light upon this subject. Thus, "I hear the Million Lottery is
drawing and thear is a prise of 400_l._ a year drawn, and Col. St. Pear
has gott 5 (_sic_) a year; it will be hard fate if you mis a pryse that
put so much in. I long tel its all drawn; they say it will be six weeks
drawing" (Aug. 1, 1710). "It will be a long time first if ever, except I
win ye thoussand p^d a year, for mony now adays is the raening passion"
(July (?) 1710). "Some very ordenary creeture has gott 400_l._ a year"
(Aug. 4, 1710). "Thear is a lady gave her footman in the last before
this, mony for a lot, and he got five hundred a year, and she would have
half, and they had a law suit, but the lawyers gave it all to him" (Aug.
7, 1710). "Betty has lost all her hopse of the Lottery, als drawn now"
(Oct. 6, 1710). "You know your grandfather's Butler (?), they say he put
ten thousand pd in the lottry and lost it