Tue recent Church Meeting was like all Shanghai meetings, very desultory but yet there were opinions broached at it, which well deserve the attention of the community. The accidents of gathering in a well-warmed room, and Of sitting on chairs, not benches, prevented men from being in a hurry to move quickly; and so the talk was general and unconstrained. Various matters relative to the ecclesiastical establishment were di ed, and the most contradictory assertions made. Several gentlemen expressed a belief that the Church was cold. The architect affirmed, with edifying solemnity, that it was warm. Several members spoke with pardonable pride of the building, as a very creditable architect tural production; and a strong desire manifested, on the other hand, to deface it by the introduction of sundry 'A happy compromise was at last effected; and it was settled to place the tablets in the narthex or portico, which is a very appropriate place for them; and is, we believe, strangely enough, agreeable to the usage of the Church which pre-eminently claims the title of orthodox; for, according to Mr. Curzon, "it has never been the custom of the Oriental Christians to bury the dead within the precincts of the church; they none of them contain sepulchral' monuments." The "leading lines" is a standard phrase at these meetings, and the reader may expect that, when this phrase occurs frequently, the arguments that are adduced are not likely to be of a very cogent character. Much interest however attaches to the suggestion that Lotteries should be star ed in Shanghai, as a recognized source of revenue. We feel that, in approaching this subject, we are treading on delicate ground. All the people who have drawn blanks will be against us, because they are conscious of vexatious loss; andah the people who have drawn prizes will be against us, because, the more popular the institution becomes in Shanghai, the less conspicuous and splendid will their own good fortune appear. Yet we are bold in attempting the advocacy of a cause which has reason and common sense emphatically on its side. OF course, a high wall of prejudice has. to be surmount ed atthe outset. English people, as a rule, are unreasonable beyond expression when the matter of morality is broached. The history of lotteries in England, as their advocate obseryed, proved this to demonstration. They were a Government monopoly, and were used by the Crown for the purpose of raising lange sams of money without the intervention of Parliament. It is enough to say that they were employed by Charles I, to show how opposition to them would naturally arise. The people were well aware that, in the hands of a sovereign with all the instincts of a despot, they might be made a formidable engine wherewithal to raise money to oppress the people. As a Crown monopoly, they were clearly mischievous; but under the control of constitutional authorities, they are as free from objection as any other means of raising money. Ths we find that, when they were objected to in 1693, the odium cast on them resulted from the unlucky fact that they were managed by adisrepatable frequenter of the Court, called Neale, who brought an otherwise unobjectionable seleme into discredit by the bad character of his antecedents. To quote the historian of the period;—" Yet* there were not wanting persons who thought it hardly decent in the Treasury, to call in the aid of a gambler by profession. This, however, is by the way. Lotteries continued to flourish in England until 1826, and if the complaints of the degeneracy of the present age are well founded, it is clear that our grand-fathers who speculated in tickets, were not worse than those of their descendants who connect themselves with _albert Insurance Companies. An age which has produced Overend Gurney Ca. need not talk about the immotality of Lotteries. Throwing all sentimentalism aside, then, we ask the question frankly, why should not a Lottery be got up for the payment of public debts. This is a peculiar community. We have made exceptional and splendid sacrifices. to secure public ends, and we have every reason to be proud of our position; but accidents have arisen that have hampered several of our great undertakings with incon venient pecuniary burdens, Why not rid ourselves of the incubus by doing, on our own account, what Manila now does for us? In plain words, why not start a Lottery for Tls. 60,000; give Tis, 40,000 in prizes, and get the church and various other institutions clear with the balance.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.