SUPPRESSING LOTTERIES

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 7, 1881

SUPPRESSING LOTTERIES.

The suit of the State of Mississippi to suppress a lottery company, has been decided on an appeal, by the U. S. Supreme Court. The corporation was chartered by the Legislature in 1867. In 1870, an act was passed giving effect to the clause in the State constitution of 1868, which prohibited the further sale of tickets by lottery companies. The Supreme Court decides that while the Legislature granting the charter undoubtedly entered into a contract with the corporation, the Legislature had no authority to bargain away the power of the State to regulate all matters affecting public health and morals; that lotteries are demoralizing in their effects, no matter how carefully regulated, cannot, in the opinion of this court, be doubted. This being the case, there can be no question that lotteries are proper subjects for the exercise of a State's governmental or police power. Contracts which the federal constitution protects are those which relate to property rights, not to government rights. The right to stop lotteries is governmental, and to be exercised at all times by those in power, at their discretion. Any one, therefore, who accepts a lottery charter, does so with the implied understanding that the people, in their sovereign capacity, and through their properly constituted authorities, may take it back at any time when the public good shall require, and this, whether it be paid for or not.