Sir, - Peter de Rosa would do well to look elsewhere than to Jonathan Swift as an authority on the supposed lunacy of lottery gambling. Swift frequently invested in lottery tickets, gambled in that desperate enterprise, the South Sea Company, and wrote enviously of others who won large sums in the lotteries held in England in the early 18th century.
At one point, when he had put some £400 at risk, when all about him men were losing heavily, he came home, he said in a letter in the Journal to Stella (January 12th, 1712), "reflecting a little. I called my philosophy and religion up; and, I thank God, it did not keep me awake beyond my usual time above a quarter of an hour." - Yours, etc.
Albert Road, Glenageary, Co Dublin.