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the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those whodraw the blanks : for though the prizes are few and theblanks many, the common price of a ticket is the whole for-tune of a very rich man. Projects of mining, instead ofreplacing the capital employed in them, together with theordinary profits of stock, commonly absorb both capital andprofit. They are the projects, therefore, to which of allothers a prudent lawgiver, who desired to increase the ca-pital of his nation, would least choose to give any extraor-dinary encouragement, or to turn towards them a greatershare of that capital than what would go to them of its ownaccord. Such in reality is the absurd confidence whichalmost all men have in their own good fortune, that whereverthere is the least probability of success, too great a share ofit is apt to go to them of its own accord.

But though the judgment of sober reason and experienceconcerning such projects has always been extremely unfa-vourable, that of human avidity has commonly been quiteotherwise. The same passion which has suggested to somany people the absurd idea of the philosopher’s stone, hassuggested to others the equally absurd one of immense richmines of gold and silver. They did not consider that thevalue of those metals has, in all ages and nations, arisenchiefly from their scarcity, and that their scarcity has arisenfrom the very small quantities of them which nature has anywhere deposited in one place, from the hard and intractablesubstances with which she has almost everywhere sur-rounded those small quantities, and consequently from thelabour and expense which are everywhere necessary in orderto penetrate to and get at them. They flattered themselvesthat veins of those metals might in many places be found aslarge and as abundant as those which are commonly foundof lead, or copper, or tin, or iron. The dream of Sir WalterRaleigh concerning the golden city and country of Eldorado,may satisfy us, that even wise men are not always exempt fromsuch strange^ delusions. More than a hundred years afterthe death of that great man, the Jesuit Gumila was stillconvinced of the' reality of that wonderful country, and ex-pressed with great warmth, and, I dare to say, with greatsincerity, how happy lie should be to carry the light of thegospel to a people who could so well reward the pious la-bours of their missionary.

In the countries first discovered by the Spaniards, no gold

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