Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/433

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
405
HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
405

LOTTERY BONDS. 405 It is for these reasons that we join the eminent economists who agree in condemning in the name of morality, and of the healthy principles embodied in political economy, the system of lottery bonds. As early as August, 1864, the Congress of economists at Hanover embraced lotteries and lottery bonds in a sweeping cen- sure, and the masters of financial science in Germany, the Rau, the Lorenz von Stein, have echoed this censure. " The search for fortune by another road than that of work is an unwholesome exci- tation," have written certain of our teachers.^ Ourselves, we could demand nothing better wherewith to conclude this essay than td recall in closing the celebrated saying of FrankUn, whom the adversaries of lottery bonds do not fail to quote in all their dis- courses and in all their writings: — " If any man tell you that you can attain riches by any other means than by hard work and economy, suspect him ; he is a poisoner." Henri Levy-Ultmann^ Dodeur en Droit, Avocat h la Cour d^Appel de Paris. Remarks. (i) Bibliography. Those interested in the subject will find the matter more fully discussed in the Trait e des Obligations a Primes et a Lots, by M. H. Levy-Ullmann, Paris, 1895, and see also the bibliography at the end of this volume. (2) In the preceding article no mention has been made of a cer- tain category of bond called " Obligations a prime," or premium bonds, (bonds payable in one price, which is higher than the sell- ing price,) which give rise to legal complications similar to those which we have just investigated, although the questions occur in somewhat ditTerent terms. 1 Cauw^s, Cours d'ficonomie Politique, Paris, 3d ed., 1893, Book IV. No. 131 1.