Kent

Mr. Justice Heydenfeldt and Mr. Justice Terry concurred.

This appeal is prosecuted from the judgment of the Court below, upon a demurrer to a bill filed to prevent the defendant from disposing of certain articles of property, set up in a lottery by him and drawn as prizes by various persons.

Suits had already been commenced before a magistrate of the county against the prize owners by fictitious names, (their real ones being unknown,) to forfeit the articles drawn by them to the State, under the provisions of an Act entitled “ An Act to prohibit Lotteries,” passed March 11, 1851, (Compiled Laws, 234,) the 4th section of which provides that “ all sums of money and other valuable things drawn as a prize, or share of a prize, in a lottery, or device in the nature of a lottery, by any person being a resident or inhabitant of the State, and all money or other valuable things received by any person by reason of his being the owner of a ticket, etc., shall be forfeited to the State,” etc.

The jurisdiction of the District Court as a Court of Equity in auxiliary proceedings of this character, is too well established to be disputed, and the principle that a Court of Equity will interfere…