In 1791 the Massachusetts Legislature granted to the proprietors of the Cotton Manufactory in Beverly four hundred tickets in the lottery about to be drawn, and three hundred in the next Semi-annual State Lottery.  “Some people, out-doors,” says the “Salem Gazette,” March 8, 1791, “murmur at this as an ill-judged act of liberality; but perhaps they are not acquainted with the arguments which induced the grant.  The disposition of Government to foster our infant manufactures is certainly laudable.”  This is unquestionably good reasoning; for, granted the premises that lotteries are ever beneficial, then there was no reason why aid should not in this way be extended to business enterprises which were to give employment to the people, as well as to schools and colleges.  Employment must be provided as well as education.  The Beverly Cotton Manufactory, Stone, in his History of Beverly, claims to be the first manufactory of its kind established in America, that at Pawtucket having been the second; and he also states that it was visited by General Washington on his tour through the country in 1789.  The leading proprietors in this enterprise were George and Andrew Cabot, Israel Thorndike and Henry Higginson, men of the highest reputation in New England for integrity and honor.

From the “Salem Gazette,” Dec. 25, 1812: 

The Historical Dictionary,

By EZRA SAMPSON, author of the Beauties of the Bible, is one of the most useful little works of this nature which we have seen.  It contains much in a small compass. Its subjects are Natural and Civil History, Geography, Zoology, Botany and Mineralogy, arranged in alphabetical order, and explained in such a neat and intelligible manner, as to render it worthy of being (according to its design) a Companion for Youth. We select the following article as a specimen of the work.

LOTTERY,

A kind of public game at hazard, in order to raise money for the service of the state.  A lottery consists of several numbers of blanks and prizes, which are drawn out of wheels, one of which contains the numbers of the tickets, and the other the corresponding blanks and prizes.  Besides the consideration that this, as well as all other kinds of gambling for money, tends to corrupt the public morals, it is also to be considered that the purchasers of the tickets are never permitted to play the game on fair and equal ground.  The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery; or one in which the whole gain compensated the whole loss; because the undertaker could make nothing by it.  In lotteries the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid by the original purchasers, and yet they often sell in the market at a considerable advance:  the vain hope of gaining some of the great prizes is the cause of this demand.  In order to have a better chance for some of the large prizes, some people purchase several tickets, and others small