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LOTTERIES: JEFFERSON'S VIEWS
>What were Jefferson's views on a lottery, and did he gamble? I have >been told that he even had a gambling "problem". I am trying to >validate or refute this claim. Please help! Jefferson distinguished between lotteries, or games of chance, and other forms of gambling. Towards the end of his life, he considered a lottery for some of his property in order to pay off the enormous debts he was burdened with. I don't think he had a gambling problem. The following quotes will give you the gist of his views on lotteries and games of chance. "If we consider games of chance immoral, then every pursuit of human industry is immoral; for there is not a single one that is not subject to chance, not one wherein you do not risk a loss for the chance of some gain... In all these pursuits, you take some one thing against another which you hope to win... These, then, are games of chance. Yet so far from being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence of man, and every one has a natural right to choose for his pursuit such one of them as he thinks most likely to furnish him subsistence." --Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on Lotteries, 1826. ME 17:448 "Almost all these pursuits of chance [i.e., of human industry] produce something useful to society. But there are some which produce nothing, and endanger the well-being of the individuals engaged in them or of others depending on them. Such are games with cards, dice, billiards, etc. And although the pursuit of them is a matter of natural right, yet society, perceiving the irresistible bent of some of its members to pursue them, and the ruin produced by them to the families depending on these individuals, consider it as a case of insanity, *quoad hoc*, step in to protect the family and the party himself, as in other cases of insanity, infancy, imbecility, etc., and suppress the pursuit altogether, and the natural right of following it. There are some other games of chance, useful on certain occasions, and injurious only when carried beyond their useful bounds. Such are insurances, lotteries, raffles, etc. These they do not suppress, but take their regulation under their own discretion." -- Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on Lotteries, 1826. ME 17:449