an almost immediate nonsuit. In February 1793 the Commissioners of the Lottery, in order to abate insuring, determined that no persons should be suffered to take down numbers except the clerks of licensed offices known to the Commissioners. No slips were to be sent out; but the numbers were to be taken down by one clerk in one book; Steel’s list of lottery numbers was to be abolished, and a recompense made for it; and the magistrates resolved to apprehend all suspicious persons who should be seen taking early numbers. Yet in 1796 there was a class of sharpers who took lottery insurances, and this gambling among the higher and middle classes was carried on to an extent exceeding all credibility, producing consequences to many private families of great worth and respectability, of the most distressing nature.
The insurance offices in