[_The Times_, July 13th, 1814.]
SIR,—A constant reader of your journal takes the liberty of inquiring
whether any measures have been adopted on the Stock Exchange to put a
stop to that illicit practice of time-bargaining, which could alone
present a sufficient temptation to the authors of the late imposition,
and will, if not abolished, continue to hold out similar inducements
to the commission of similar frauds. To punish the invention of false
news, with the particular view to affect the funds, and yet to suffer
such practices in the funds as are both of themselves illegal, and
also give occasion to the invention of the falsehoods, must appear to
every one to be highly preposterous; in fact, the invention of false
news and time-bargaining, must be considered but as different parts of
the same act; they sprung up together—have grown and thriven
together—and, whatever some may suppose, are of no very recent birth.
Lord Cochrane has, in truth, been found guilty of that which has been,
in a less degree perhaps, practised without disgrace almost every week
in the year upon ’Change, namely, a conspiracy to affect the price of
Stock, by the invention and circulation of false news; and if it was
necessary for the noble conspirator and his friends to put in motion a
greater apparatus than usual for the execution of their plans, they
have only thereby facilitated the means of detection, and proved their
want of dexterity in such enterprises, while the hackneyed jobbers,
managing their repeated impositions with less ostentation, are, in
length of time, enabled to effect much greater mischief, as the mildew
does more harm to the hopes of an honest husbandman than a
thunderstorm.
Of the sentence passed upon Lord Cochrane, I shall say little; but as
the most offensive part of it is matter of feeling and of character
connected with feeling, I think that the characters and feelings of
those at whose expense the imposition was chiefly successful, should
have been likewise taken into consideration. If they are men immersed
in habits of that nature of which Lord Cochrane’s offence only
constituted a single act, I say that they had not a right to require,
or to be gratified by, so severe a sentence as if they had come into
court wholly unconnected with such proceedings in their own persons.
What I have to demand, therefore, is, whether the gentlemen of the
Stock Exchange, with this notable example of punishment before their
eyes, have any idea of adopting some new system,—of forming some new
resolution against those usages which have hitherto prevailed among
them, but have never till now been visited by so tremendous a
sentence? If they have not, I think it a pity that the learned judge
who passed the late sentence did not endeavour to awaken their caution
by some warning of the danger of persevering in those courses which
had led in the passing instance to so calamitous a result; in short,
an officer in the public service has fallen by a conviction for
conspiring with others to raise the funds; the public has therefore a
right to expect from all those connected with the sale of national
property some general expression of their detestation of that offence
of which Lord Cochrane has been convicted. Have they, or the major
part of them, seemed by their general practice to consider it to be a
crime till they came to suffer by it themselves, from any alien to
their profession? Then they raised clamours about it, no doubt. I ask
farther whether the Committee who advertised for evidence against Lord
Cochrane mean to stop at the exposure of this single offence? or
whether they are resolved, as in justice they ought to be, to hunt out
and eject from the Stock Exchange all time-bargainers, hoaxers,
bangers, and other practisers of fraud, for the raising or lowering of
the funds? Or, if these are too powerful to be attacked, whether they
mean at least simply to date a new era from Lord Cochrane’s
conviction, to proclaim an amnesty of the past, and to give notice
that in future hoaxing, banging, and everything that leads to the
illegal practice of time-bargaining, as well as time-bargaining
itself, shall be no longer practised among them with impunity? I call
upon these gentlemen of the Committee particularly to explain to the
nation what, in their opinion, ought to be the future regulations of
stock-jobbing from this time, when a public example is to be made of
one, who, to say the worst of him, has only carried the old practice
to the utmost extent of its limits. I call, Sir, upon the members of
the Stock Exchange, universally, for an answer to these queries,
founded upon facts of which none of them can deny the existence; and I
further denounce prospectively against them, that, if they will make
no rules for themselves, Parliament will interfere, and either make
some for them, or will at least vivify the old ones by such means of
discovery as themselves have used, when they have been the dupes. In
expectation of a reply,
I remain. Sir, &c.
BYRSA.
To the Editor of _The Times_.
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