CHAPTER XVIII.

_Life Assurance.—Its Benefits.—Its Commencement.—Suicide of an

Insurer.—Insurance of Invalid Lives.—The Gresham.—Sketch of the

West Middlesex Delusion._

The day on which the first life-assurance office was established is

worthy of remembrance by the great mass of the middle class. Faulty

in construction, and erroneous in detail, it was the enunciation

of a great principle, the birth of a great blessing. Innovations

were not made in the eighteenth, any more than in the nineteenth

century, however, without opposition; and when, in 1706, the Amicable

commenced business, prophets were plentiful in declaring it must

fail, while others announced that it would open the door to gambling,

and was flying in the face of Providence. But the excellence of the

principle triumphed; and, although one uniform rate prevailed for the

sick and for the sound, for the old and for the young, the Amicable

succeeded. The pale face of the invalid was no objection; the purple

hue of him who fared sumptuously was no preventive. The man on the

brink of the grave, and the youth on the verge of manhood, paid the

same premium; and for £5 per cent. per annum, and £7 10_s._ per cent.

entrance-money, every one was enabled to insure his life. Such was

the primitive plan of the first life association.

The London Assurance and Royal Exchange corporations followed,

in 1720. In 1762, the Equitable was established; and, although a

trifling progress was made, the clumsy plan of equal payments,

without reference to years, was perpetuated, and five per cent. paid

by all. When, however, the rates were varied in proportion to age,

when sick men were rejected, and only the healthy taken, a step was

made in the right direction; and life assurance began to flourish

with a vigor which astonished even its promoters.

It is believed that England is the only state in which the insurance

of lives has never been prohibited. The Dutch, a commercial people,

refused to legalize it until a recent period; and in France it was

long deemed unlawful, “because it is an offence against public

decency to set a price upon the life of a freeman, which is above all

valuation.” Another great objection was the fear that individuals

might destroy themselves to enrich their families; and though this

exaggerated view of the case is provided for in modern policies, yet

the following anecdote will prove that the fear was not altogether

groundless. So early as the middle of the eighteenth century,

the clause which excluded the representatives of suicides from a

participation in the amount insured excited attention; and an office

was established, which, for a corresponding increase of premium, paid

the amount to the relatives of the self-murderer. One man, deeply in

debt, wishing to pay his creditors, and not knowing how, went to the

office, insured his life, and invited the insurers to dine with him

at a tavern, where several other persons were present. After dinner

he rose, and addressing the former, said, “Gentlemen, it is fitting

you should know the company you have met. These are my tradesmen,

whom I could not pay without your assistance. I am greatly obliged to

you; and now——” Without another word he bowed, pulled out a pistol,

and shot himself.

The number of insurances was, at first, necessarily very limited; the

mode in which the directors transacted business, the premiums they

required, the determination to take none but lives which were almost

faultless, the pernicious plan of occasionally resisting the payment

of policies, the absence of much opposition, all tended to reduce

the business. When, however, the capital of the country increased,

and men looked earnestly about them for new modes of investment,

the profits and the principles of life assurance were anxiously

investigated, its demands inquired into, its difficulties overcome;

and though from 1706 to 1806 nine offices had been found sufficient,

yet from 1806 to 1846 the desire spread so rapidly, that no less

than one hundred and eleven were established. In 1820, there were

only twenty offices in the United Kingdom; in 1830, their number was

exactly doubled; in 1840, they had again doubled; and from 1840 to

1845, they increased in the same proportion.

The success which has attended these companies has induced

capitalists to invest their money in similar schemes, and the result

has been, that during every period of excitement new associations

have been started, with new claims to patronage. Those claims were

put prominently forward to benefit themselves; and life assurance

companies cannot greatly benefit their promoters without benefiting

others. The constant advertisements, the names of their directors,

the statement of their terms, the peculiarity of their constitution,

pressed upon general attention, the public mind gradually became

possessed with the idea that life insurances were for every class,

and business increased. Every objection was met, every demand

grappled with; and there is now, probably, not a man in London who

cannot, in a smaller or greater degree, provide for those he may

leave behind. The principal offices were proprietary; and the entire

gain went to the shareholder. But the insurers began to see that the

profits made by a corporation might as well be made by themselves;

and companies which joined the proprietary with the participating

principle followed. Another movement was that which divided the

entire profits among the assured, reducing the premium as the company

prospered; and so thoroughly is the value of life understood, that

a society, commencing on this plan, with fair premiums and fair

management, is as safe as a company with a capital of half a million.

But there were other difficulties to be met, as a pernicious plan

obtained of disputing the payment of policies when the life fell in,

on trivial and often unjustifiable grounds; the advantages of the

system being greatly reduced owing to the desire for gain of the

proprietary offices. To meet this, a society is now established,

termed the Indisputable, which holds the policy inviolable when once

granted.

There still remained one class for whom life assurances were

unavailing. The anxiety for profits of the companies, the

determination to divide good dividends, the extreme desire to take

none but unexceptionable lives, produced an evil, at first view,

irremediable. The stringent regulations, the declarations required,

the personal examination, and the private inquiry, produced an

unhappy effect. Average lives were declined, and for him whose health

was not perfect, there was no chance. The healthy, but nervous man,

whose pulse, when examined, beat like a steam-engine, was very often

refused; and stories of rejected applicants, which speak volumes,

are prevalent. One gentleman was declined because he was deaf, as

he ran more risk of being run over. Another was refused because he

had been three times bankrupt, and his system might have suffered.

A third was too full of health, and might die of apoplexy. A fourth

was deficient, and might die of decline. The old companies were

absolutely determined to take no life but what was unexceptionable.

The consequence was, that men in rude, robust health, if blind in

one eye, or deaf with one ear, were often rejected; and there are

innumerable instances of the refused party living to a good old

age; while cases are not wanting, in which, after outliving doctor,

actuary, and half the board of directors, the very man who, thirty

years before, was refused at any price, was gladly taken by the same

company at the ordinary premium.

The possessor of sound health, who has provided for his family,

cannot comprehend the misery occasioned to the invalid by the

conviction that his application will be rejected; and in a country

where men labor long in an impure atmosphere, there are too many

whose lives are early damaged. To these, every allusion to life

assurance was an agony; and it is difficult to enter thoroughly into

the distress of him who knew he would die penniless, when a sudden

sickness possessed him. Unnerved both mentally and physically, he

saw his last hour approach. Loathing the trifling luxuries which

sustained him, because they would impoverish his family; dreading the

footsteps of the physician, as he thought of his fee; the love of his

wife was no comfort, the voices of his children no pleasure; for he

knew that his death would leave them to public or private charity.

Such was the position of the individual rejected by a life office.

But even this want has been responded to. Many offices now profess

to take invalid lives at an increased premium; and two are really

devoted to this particular risk. The Invalid and Medical Life

Assurance Company first began, and was successful; and the Gresham,

lately established, has proved that the class for which it is

specially intended is numerous. Much may depend upon the judgment of

the medical officer; but so great is the anxiety to insure, that the

premium is of less importance to the insured than in ordinary cases,

and the office is able to protect its interest. The idea has been

supported and approved by actuaries generally. The success of the

Gresham is a proof of its merit. Every man of feeling must cordially

agree in the principle; and the speech of Mr. Marshall, cashier

to the Bank of England, is one of many proofs that the insurance

companies, a quarter of a century ago, were ignorant of their own

interests.[12]

“I myself,” said that gentleman, “fell under the class of declined

lives, and for the whole of my life have been deprived of the

advantages which are offered by life assurances. One-and-thirty years

ago, I had the misfortune to break a blood vessel in my lungs, and

had I proposed to any office, that fact, as an honest man, I must

have stated, and that statement would have caused my rejection. From

that time to this I have enjoyed perfect health, and I stand before

you this evening, a strong and healthy man, a living example of the

value of this society, and I present to you a fact, to show that this

is likely to be a profitable investment.”

Another society deserves notice, from its admirable plan of uniting a

benevolent principle with the benefit derivable from life assurance,

and from its addressing a class, to the families of which life

assurance is the only barrier against absolute poverty. That class

has been hitherto but little thought of, though there is none on

whom it would be better bestowed, than on the clerks of England.

Industrious, faithful, and intelligent, they are almost compelled,

by virtue of their position, to maintain an appearance beyond their

means. With incomes which just enable them to pay their debts, and

which provide for no contingencies, they are to a great degree

incapacitated from insuring their lives; and solacing themselves,

therefore, with the idea that a small insurance would be of no

avail, they feel that they cannot afford a great one. To this class,

therefore, a society which specially provides for its wants is a

great benefit; and a kindly feeling between the clerk on the one

side, and his superior on the other, is encouraged, to the advantage

of both, through the Provident Clerks’ Mutual Life Assurance

Association.

Many instances might be given of the value of this society; and

the writer trusts that the few lines in which he has honestly and

earnestly indulged, for the sake of pointing attention to those

offices which he deems deserving notice, may be regarded in the light

in which they are written.

The cause of life assurance has occasionally received severe blows;

and though, perhaps, less fraud has been attempted in these than in

other companies, yet there is one instance of deception, so boldly

planned and so successfully executed, as to stand out in strong

relief in the history of life assurance.

About the year 1837, the provincial papers were filled with

advertisements, drawing attention to the peculiar claims of the

Independent West Middlesex Life and Fire Assurance Company. Its

capital was stated to be one million; it was declared to be a legal

corporation; and Acts of Parliament, dated from 1696, were boldly

quoted. Cautiously did the promoters proceed in the metropolis,

where they did not at first advertise, contenting themselves with

establishing agencies in various parts of the country, and publishing

advertisements in country papers. An imposing array of names as

directors, declared to be of the first character and respectability,

was promulgated; and when such names as Drummond and Perkins appeared

in the list, the uninitiated believed the one to be the great banker,

and the other the rich brewer, bearing the same names. To add to the

delusion, the Bank of England was advertised as their bankers; and

when they opened handsome premises in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and

Glasgow, the minds of the many were thoroughly deluded. Some notion

may be formed of their intention from the fact, that they not only

insured lives on smaller premiums than other offices, but gave larger

annuities for smaller sums. According to their tables, a man of

thirty, by paying £100, could obtain £8 yearly, and could insure his

life at £1 15_s._ per cent.; thus making a clear interest of £6 5_s._

per annum.

The deed of the company—for, strange to say, it had a deed—was signed

by any one who chose; and the law-stationer applied indiscriminately

to all who came near him. Any one who asked for a situation was made

a governor. A schoolmaster, who requested a clerkship, was made a

director. An errand-man was employed as manager. A boy of sixteen

was appointed to a seat at the board. One director had been tapman

to a London tavern; another had been dismissed from his employ as a

journeyman bell-hanger; a third had been a gentleman’s servant; all

had orders to dress well, to place rings on their fingers, and adorn

their persons with jewelry; fines being instituted if they omitted to

wear the ornaments provided.

The advertisements which blazoned the pretensions of the company, the

puffing to which they resorted, the declaration that they had taken

£40,000 in one year, together with the terms they offered, attracted

that numerous class determined to get every thing cheap. Premiums to

a large amount were procured by them, and they prospered.

The attention of the established assurance offices had long been

drawn to these transactions; and it was known that a great crash

must one day come; but they had not sufficient courage to declare

the iniquity. It was left, therefore, to individual energy to

expose their doings, and to individual resources to support the

consequences. In March, 1839, Mr. Peter Mackenzie, editor and

proprietor of the _Scotch Reformers’ Gazette_, having investigated

the question, and made careful inquiries which satisfied him of the

nature of the company, commenced a series of articles in that paper,

warning the public against transacting business with them. The task

was difficult and dangerous; but it was boldly met, and skilfully

supported. The following extracts from the journal of Mr. Mackenzie

will show the earnest spirit in which he grappled with his task:—

“In a word, we raise our voice and warn the public to beware of this

so-called Independent West Middlesex Insurance Company.” “It is a

false and fictitious company.” “No better than a parcel of tricksters

in London, disowned, repudiated, or condemned by every respectable

person.” “Will the mere statement of a parcel of swindlers in their

own favor entitle them to public favor, or secure public confidence?”

“Nor shall we rest contented till we chase them out of every town

and city in her Majesty’s dominions, or till they are fairly seized

by the strong arm of justice.” “We defy the confederated band of

swindlers, from the highest to the lowest.”

The wild fury of Mr. Mackenzie’s opponents may be conceived. They

declared him to be a false and malicious calumniator. They published

counter-statements, assumed the aspect of injured and of innocent

men, and instituted separate actions against him for £12,000 damages.

One of the agents had been in London, and had the audacity to state,

on his return, that the deputy-governor of the Bank of England had

personally assured him of the respectability of the association.

Mr. Mackenzie, however, procured and published a denial from that

gentleman; and this increased the hatred of the accomplices. Two

thousand pounds were placed at the disposal of their law agents, to

destroy Mr. Mackenzie, who appears to have been one of those not

easily moved from a righteous purpose. He continued his articles, he

continued to warn the public; and though, when the actions brought

against him in 1839 were dismissed in 1840, they raised new suits,

he persisted in his bold defiance, and did not hesitate one moment

in the task he had undertaken. They could not, however, long conceal

their practices; and one fine morning, the entire gang absconded,

taking with them from the premises every article of furniture, after

having realized, in four years, a booty of £250,000.

The distress which pervaded the middle and the lower classes was

great. Applications to magistrates were frequent. Aged men, who had

invested their all, went to the workhouse; servants, who had bought

annuities with the savings of a life, were obliged to commence anew.

Parents, who imagined they had provided for their children, were half

broken-hearted. Day by day brought some new case, and day by day

evinced the importance of being contented with a fair and legitimate

percentage.

There is no knowing to what extent the evil might have reached

had not the boldness of Mr. Mackenzie induced him to attack the

Independent West Middlesex Company. The longer such an association

lasts, the more numerous are its constituents; and to the above

gentleman the thanks of the entire country are due, for performing,

at a personal risk, and at a personal sacrifice of £700, a great

public service.

The following extract from a letter, evincing the amenity of

disposition and choice of language of the person who conducted the

delusion, may prove an interesting close to the above narrative:—

“Thou art a scoundrel, and thy son no better. I give you and your

lying rascal of a ——— notice, that if you or he should dare to

publish any slander relative to my character, I shall instruct my

solicitor to prosecute you, perjured scoundrel. You base wretch,

swear against your own handwriting! What! swear you never borrowed

any money of me for the office. O wicked wretch! I have your

signature, and my solicitor has seen it. Base, base, base, base!

Hang thyself with thy friend!

“P. S. I have heard you have again plundered the office. O, how

many times, you wretch!”

FOOTNOTES:

[12] The writer can add his personal testimony to the necessity

of some such office. Twenty years ago, he suffered similarly to

Mr. Marshall, and has since been debarred from the benefit of life

assurance, although in possession of good average health. There are

a thousand other cases; and the fact that the Gresham gradually

increases in business, and has in the first year granted policies

to the amount of £150,000, producing nearly £6,000 yearly, is very

suggestive of the public requirements. The fact, also, that in such

a company no death has occurred during the first twelve months, is

honorable to the skill of its medical officer.

APPENDIX.

THE

ANATOMY OF EXCHANGE ALLEY;

OR,

A SYSTEM OF STOCK-JOBBING:

PROVING THAT SCANDALOUS TRADE, AS IT IS NOW CARRIED ON, TO BE KNAVISH

IN ITS PRIVATE PRACTICE, AND TREASON IN ITS PUBLIC.[13]

The general cry against stock-jobbing has been such, and people have

been so long and so justly complaining of it as a public nuisance,

and, which is still worse, have complained so long without a remedy,

that the jobbers, hardened in crime, are at last come to exceed all

bounds, and now, if ever, sleeping justice will awake, and take some

notice of them, and if it should not now, yet the diligent creatures

are so steady to themselves, that they will, some time or other, make

it absolutely necessary to the government to demolish them.

I know they upon all occasions laugh at the suggestion, and have the

pride to think it impracticable to restrain them; and one of the top

of the function the other day, when I casually told him that, if they

went on, they would make it absolutely necessary to the legislature

to suppress them, returned, that he believed it was as absolutely

necessary for them to do it now as ever it could be. But how will

they do it? It is impossible, said he; but if the government takes

credit, their funds should come to market; and while there is a

market, we will buy and sell. There is no effectual way in the world,

says he, to suppress us but this, viz., that the government should

first pay all the public debts, redeem all the funds, and dissolve

all the charters, viz. Bank, South Sea, and East India, and buy

nothing upon trust, and then, indeed, says he, they need not hang the

stock-jobbers, for they will be apt to hang themselves.

I must confess, I in part agree that this is an effectual way; but

I am far from thinking it the only way to deal with a consideration

of usurers, who, having sold the whole nation to usury, keep the

purse-strings of poor and rich in their hands, which they open and

shut as they please.

But before I come to the needful ways for restraining those people, I

think it will be of some service to expose their practices to common

view, that the people may see a little what kind of dealers they are.

And first, they have this peculiar to them, and in which they outdo

all the particular pieces of public knavery that ever I met with in

the world, viz., that they have nothing to say for it themselves;

they have, indeed, a particular stock of hardware, as the braziers

call it, in their faces, to bear them out in it; but if you talk

to them of their occupation, there is not a man but will own it is

a complete system of knavery; that it is a trade founded in fraud,

born of deceit, and nourished by trick, cheat, wheedle, forgeries,

falsehoods, and all sorts of delusions; coining false news, this way

good, that way bad; whispering imaginary terrors, frights, hopes,

expectations, and then preying upon the weakness of those whose

imaginations they have wrought upon, whom they have either elevated

or depressed. If they meet with a cull, a young dealer that has money

to lay out, they catch him at the door, whisper to him, “Sir, here is

a great piece of news, it is not yet public, it is worth a thousand

guineas but to mention it; I am heartily glad I met you, but it must

be as secret as the black side of your soul, for they know nothing

of it yet in the coffee-house; if they should, stock would rise ten

per cent. in a moment, and I warrant you South Sea will be 130 in

a week’s time after it is known.” “Well,” says the weak creature,

“pr’ythee, dear Tom, what is it?” “Well, really, Sir, I will let you

into the secret, upon your honor to keep it till you hear it from

other hands; why, it is this,—the Pretender is certainly taken, and

is carried prisoner to the castle of Milan; there they have him fast.

I assure you, the government had an express of it from my Lord St——s,

within this hour.” “Are you sure of it?” says the fish, who jumps

eagerly into the net. “Sure of it! why, if you take your coach and go

up to the secretaries’ office, you may be satisfied of it yourself,

and be down again in two hours, and, in the mean time, I will be

doing something, though it is but little, till you return.”

Away goes the gudgeon with his head full of wildfire, and a squib

in his brain, and, coming to the place, meets a croney at the door,

who ignorantly confirms the report, and so sets fire to the mine;

for, indeed, the cheat came too far to be balked at home; so that,

without giving himself time to consider, he hurries back full of the

delusions, dreaming of nothing but of getting a hundred thousand

pounds, or purchase two; and even this money was to be gotten only

upon the views of his being beforehand with other people.

In this elevation he meets his broker, who throws more fireworks into

the mine, and blows him up to so fierce an inflammation, that he

employs him instantly to take guineas to accept stock of any kind,

and almost at any price; for the news being now public, the artist

made their price upon him. In a word, having accepted them for fifty

thousand pounds more than he is able to pay, the jobber has got an

estate, the broker two or three hundred guineas, and the esquire

remains at leisure to sell his coach and horses, his fine seat and

rich furniture, to make good the deficiency of his bear-skins; and,

at last, when all will not go through it, he must give them a brush

for the rest.

There are who tell us, that the Exchange Alley improvements made upon

the news of the Pretender’s being taken, were part of the plot, that

the late Earl of Mar having concerted the voyage of Voghera, and how

and in what manner the report of the Pretender’s being there should

spread, who it should amuse, and how at one blow it should spread

east to Vienna, and northwest to Paris, and so on, forgot not to

contrive it, as at once should serve political ends in Italy and at

Vienna: so, on the other hand, it should not fail to serve a private

view in Exchange Alley; and, at the same time that he deceived some

of the Whigs who he owed a large grudge to for shrewd turns at

Preston and Dumblain, he might also raise a tax upon them towards the

incident changes of his wandering circumstances.

I do not aver this story to be true, but the concert is so exact, and

the nature of it so agreeable to the stock-jobbing art, nay, and to

the artists also, whose correspondents are very punctual, especially

since it is said that Mr. T——’s chief agent was formerly my Lord

M——r’s broker; that I won’t affirm it may be true; but this I will

venture to say of it, that if we are often served thus, the Pretender

may very easily raise a hundred thousand pounds a year in Exchange

Alley, for the carrying on an invasion, and lay the tax wholly upon

his enemies the Whigs, which, by the way, I leave them to consider of.

But now that I make good the charge, viz., that the whole art and

mystery is a mere original system of cheat and delusion, I must let

you see, too, that this part of the comedy may be very well called,

“A Bite for the Biter,” for which I must go back to the broker and

his gudgeon; the moneyed gentleman finding himself let into the

secret, indeed, and that he was bitten to the tune of £300,000 worse

than nothing. After he had, unhappily, paid as far as his ready

money would go, of which piece of honesty they say he has heartily

repented, and is in hopes all that come after him will forgive him

for the sake of what followed, stopped short, as he might well,

you’ll say, when his money was all gone, and bethinks himself, What

am I doing! I have paid away all this money like a fool; I was drawn

in like an ass, by the eager desire of biting my neighbours to a

vast sum, and I have been fool enough in that; but I have been ten

thousand times a worse fool to pay a groat of the money, especially

since I knew I could not pay it all. Besides, who but I would have

forgot the nature of the thing I was dealing in, and of the people

I was dealing with? Why, is it not all a mere body of knavery? Is

not the whole system of stock-jobbing a science of fraud? and are

not all the dealers original thieves and pickpockets? Nay, do they

not own it themselves? Have not I heard T. W., B. O., and F. S., a

thousand times say they know their employment was a branch of highway

robbing, and only differed in two things; first, in degree, viz.,

that it was ten thousand times worse, more remorseless, more void

of humanity, done without necessity, and committed upon fathers,

brothers, widows, orphans, and intimate friends; in all which cases,

highwaymen, generally touched with remorse, and affected with

principles of humanity and generosity, stopped short, and chose to

prey upon strangers only. Secondly, in danger, viz., that these rob

securely; the other, with the utmost risk that the highwayman run,

at the hazard of their lives, being sure to be hanged first or last,

whereas these rob only at the hazard of their reputation, which is

generally lost before they begin, and of their souls, which trifle

is not worth the mentioning. Have not I, I say, heard my broker, Mr.

——, say all this and much more, “That no man was obliged to make good

any of their Exchange Alley bargains, unless he pleased, and unless

he was in haste to part with his money, which, indeed, I am not; and

have not all the brokers and jobbers, when they have been bitten too

hard, said the same thing, and refused to pay?

“Pray, how much did old Cudworth, Ph. C—p—m, and Mr. G——g, eminent

jobbers, monarchs in their days of Exchange Alley, break for? And how

much did they ever pay? One, if I mistake not, compounded at last for

one penny per pound, and the other two for something less.

“In a word, they are all a gang of rogues and cheats, and I’ll pay

none of them. Besides, my lawyer, Sir Thomas Subtle, tells me there

is not a man of them dares sue me; _no, though I had no protection to

fly to_; and he states the case thus:—

“‘You have, Sir,’ says Subtle, ‘contracted to accept of stock at a

high price; East India at 220, Bank at 160, South Sea 120, and the

like. Very well. They come to put it upon you, the stock being since

fallen. Tell them you cannot take it yet; if they urge your contract,

and demand when you will take it, tell them you will take it when you

think fit.

“‘If they swagger, call names,—as rogue, cheat, and the like,—tell

them, as to that, you are all of a fraternity; there is no great

matter in it whether you cheat them, or they cheat you; ’tis as it

happens in the way of trade; that it all belongs to the craft; and,

as the Devil’s broker, Whiston, said to parson Giffard, tell them you

are all of a trade. If they rage, and tell you the Devil will have

you, and such as that, tell them they should let the Devil and you

alone to agree about that, it is none of their business; but when he

comes for you, tell them you would advise them to keep out of the

way, or get a protection, as you have against them.

“‘After this, it is supposed they will sue you at law. Then leave

it to me; I’ll hang them up for a year or two in our courts; and if

ever in that time the stock comes up to the price, we will tender the

money in court, demand the stock, and saddle the charges of the suit

upon them. Let them avoid it if they can.’

“This is my lawyer’s opinion,” says he to himself, “and I’ll follow

it to a tittle; and so we are told he has; and I do not hear that one

stock-jobber has begun to sue him yet, or intends it; nor, indeed,

dare they do it.”

This experiment, indeed, may teach understanding to every honest

man that falls into the clutches of these merciless men, called

stock-jobbers; and I give the world this notice, that, in short, not

one of their Exchange Alley bargains need be otherwise than thus

complied with. And, let these buyers of bear-skins remember it, not a

man of them dare go to common law to recover the conditions; nor is

any man obliged, farther than he thinks himself obliged in principle,

to make good one of his bargains with them. How far principle will

carry any man to be just to a common cheat, that has drawn him into

a snare, I do not, indeed, know; but I cannot suppose it will go a

very great length, where there is so clear, so plain, and so legal a

door to get out at.

It must be confessed that, if the projected story of the taking of

the Pretender was acted in concert between Rome and Exchange Alley,

between my Lord Mar and a certain broker, as fame reports,—either

the broker is the devil of a Jacobite, or my Lord the devil of a

broker,—it must be acknowledged it was a far-fetched trick, and

answered the end in Exchange most admirably.

Nor can all the world tell us any other end that it could answer; for

as to the pretences of deluding the imperialists on shore, or the

British men-of-war at sea, and so the better to facilitate the escape

of the Pretender to Spain, I undertake to prove that this is absurd

and ridiculous; for the Pretender was embarked at Netunna, and gone

away to sea thirteen days, at least, before this whim of people taken

at Voghera was talked of.

As to the amusements among the Courts at Vienna, Paris, and London,

they amounted to nothing at all, answered no end; neither prompted

any design on one hand, or hindered any thing on the other. In a

word, we may challenge the world to tell us any one turn that was

served by it, or end answered by it, but this in Exchange Alley.

Nor was this so inconsiderable a design as not to be worth while to

form such a juggle, though a great way off; and, as far off as it

is, if we may believe the report of those who remember the machines

and contrivances of that original of stock-jobbing, Sir F—— C——.

There are those who tell us letters have been ordered, by private

management, to be written from the East Indies, with an account of

the loss of ships which have been arrived there, and the arrival

of ships lost; of war with the Great Mogul, when they have been in

perfect tranquillity; and of peace with the Great Mogul, when he was

come down against the factory of Bengal with one hundred thousand

men;—just as it was thought proper to calculate those rumors for the

raising and falling of the stock, and when it was for his purpose to

buy cheap, or sell dear.

It would be endless to give an account of the subtleties of that

capital ch—t, when he had a design to bite the whole Exchange. As he

was the leading hand to the market, so he kept it in his power to

set the price to all the dealers. The subject then was chiefly the

East India stock, though there were other stocks on foot, too, though

since sunk to nothing; such as the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Linen

Manufacture stock, Paper stock, Saltpetre stock, and others, all at

this day worse than nothing, though some of them then jobbed up to

350 per cent., as the two first in particular.

But the East India stock was the main point. Every man’s eye, when he

came to the market, was upon the brokers who acted for Sir F——. Does

Sir F—— sell or buy? If Sir F—— had a mind to buy, the first thing he

did was to commission his brokers to look sour, shake their heads,

suggest bad news from India; and at the bottom it followed, “I have

commission from Sir F—— to sell out whatever I can”; and perhaps they

would actually sell ten, perhaps twenty thousand pounds. Immediately

the Exchange (for they were not then come to the Alley) was full of

sellers; nobody would buy a shilling; till perhaps the stock would

fall six, seven, eight, ten per cent., sometimes more. Then the

cunning jobber had another set of men employed on purpose to buy, but

with privacy and caution, all the stock they could lay their hands

on; till, by selling ten thousand pounds at four or five per cent.

loss, he would buy a hundred thousand pounds stock at ten or twelve

per cent. under price; and, in a few weeks, by just the contrary

method, set them all buying, and then sell them their own stock again

at ten or twelve per cent. profit.

These honest methods laid the foundation, we will not say of a fine

great stone house, on a certain forest, but it certainly laid the

foundation of an opulent family, and initiated the crowds of jobbers

in that dexterity in tricking and cheating one another, which, to

this day, they are the greatest proficients that this part of the

world ever saw.

By this exactly-concerted intelligence, he then knew how to turn the

wages (a sort of jobbing then in mode, and which grew so infamous

that they were at length obliged to suppress it by Act of Parliament)

which way he pleased, and by which he got an immense sum of money.

How often did the gentleman run down true news as if it had been

false, and run up false news as if it had been true, by the force of

his foreign intelligencers! How often coin reports of great actions,

to serve a turn! It is too late a trick to be forgot by many that

were bit by it to the bone.

In a word, the putting false news upon us is nothing but an old trade

revived,—though, it must be confessed, this of the Pretender has been

a masterpiece,—and the worthy projector who has the credit of it must

pass for a dexterous manager as any the university of Exchange Alley

has bred up for thirty years past.

It had, also, one particular in it for which it was very remarkable.

Sham reports, false news, foreign letters, &c., are things that have

been often trumped upon us, as above; and the town have been, not

long ago, cheated to a good round sum that way; but then they have

been soon detected, the morning news has been set to rights in the

afternoon, or the evening’s heat has cooled by morning. But this

trick had a fatal duration, for it held us near a fortnight in a firm

persuasion of the thing; and even then it continued but suspected

only for some time longer, and was yet longer before it was fully

detected; and even at last it was hardly conquered till the Jacobites

laughed us out of it, and the Pretender was looked for nearer home.

The assurance with which it was carried about the several places from

whence it was written, made it so effectually be swallowed down,

that really people saw no room to question the truth of it for a

great while. It was written from Rome, from Leghorn, from Genoa, from

Turin, and from Paris. Nay, it was even believed at court, and almost

everywhere else.

Exquisite fraud! Who could have believed that this had been born in

Exchange Alley, sent over to Rome, agreed to there, and executed in

such a manner as to cheat, not the town only, but all Europe!

The authority that every one found attended the report, supported it

so that it possessed us all; even those whose concern for the fact

extorted tears from them, were not undeceived. Thus the hucksters

had time to play their game, and they made hay while the sun shone;

for, if we may believe common fame, bargains, contracts, and

agreements for stocks, bear-skins included, amounted in that time to

some hundred thousands of pounds; nay, some say to two millions and

better, most of which was to the loss of the believing party.

But what tricking, what fraud, what laying plots as deep as hell, and

as far as the ends of the earth, is here! What cheating of fathers,

and mothers, and brothers, gulling widows, orphans, cozening the most

wary, and plundering the unwary! And how much meaner robberies than

these bring the friendless even to the gallows every sessions!

But I must not stop here. The story of the Pretender is over; that

trump is played; and the artful gamester is wanting a new trick,

after having played so many already that one would think invention

was at an end; yet they have found it out, and we are just let into

the secret.

Hitherto, craft and knavery appears to be their method; but we shall

trace them now a little farther; and, like true hussars, who plunder

not the enemy only, but their own army, as the opportunity presents,

so these men are now come to prey upon the government itself.

Let us look into the late lotteries; had not a piercing eye detected

the roguery, and not the fall of other things taken off the edge of

the people’s fancy for venturing. These artists have brought up the

tickets to sixteen shillings apiece, advance, even before the act was

passed. That this could not be but by securing the possession of all

the tickets in their own hands, except such select tickets as were

not to come to market, I say this could not be but by connivance,

and this every one knows; and that this connivance again could not

be but by some higher people than those that were named to it, this,

also, every one may know. Who they were, is none of my business

to inquire, though it is easy to guess. It is very hard when our

statesmen come into a confederacy to bite the people, and when dukes

turn stock-jobbers. Yet that this was done is most certain; and what

was this but making a property of the power that might be in their

hands, the better to bite the people? For if the Parliament appointed

£500,000 in tickets, to be given out at a certain rate that was low

and reasonable, was it not to encourage the people, on whom the

rest of the national burden lies? And if, by the craft and knavery

of jobbers, the people are made to pay £600,000 for them, which is

much about the case, pray, why not pay the hundred thousand pounds

to the public, either to pay off a hundred thousand pounds of debt,

or to make the burden of the current year a hundred thousand pounds

lighter?—of which, I am sure, there is need enough.

It has been, indeed, our happiness, that a worthy member, being

informed of this abominable cheat, detected it, and laid it before

the House; upon which a vote was passed to make void all bargains

make for tickets before the act was passed; so the biters were

bitten; and a certain Sir George —— was obliged to refund; but the

roguery of the design was never a jot the less for that.

But the fatal influence of this growing evil does not end here,

and I must trace stock-jobbing now to its new-acquired capacity of

intermeddling with the public, assisting rebellion, encouraging

invasion; and if I do not bring the stock-jobbers, even the Whigs

among them, to be guilty of treason against their king and country,

and that of the worst kind, too, then I do nothing.

Had the stock-jobbers been all Jacobites by profession, or had the

employment led them by the necessity of their business to put king

and nation, and particularly their own, to bargain and sale; and

had the feeling of news been their property, and they had an act

of Parliament, or patent, to entitle them to the sole privilege of

imposing what false things they pleased on the people, I should have

had much the less reason to have complained of their roguery, and

have rather turned myself to the rest of them people, who are the

subject they work upon, and only have stood at Exchange Alley end,

and cried out, “Gentlemen, have a care of your pockets.”

Again, had it been a private club, or society of men, acting one

among another,—had the cheats, the frauds, and the tricks they

made use of, in which the English rogue was a fool to them, being

practised upon themselves only, and, like gamesters at a public

board, they had only played with those that came there to play with

them; in this case, also, I should have held my tongue, and only put

them in mind of an old song, every stanza of which chimed in with,

“Tantararara, rogues all, rogues all.”

But when we find this trade become a political vice, a public crime,

and that, as it is now carried on, it appears dangerous to the

public, that, whenever any wickedness is in hand, any mischief by the

worst of the nation’s enemies upon the wheel, the stock-jobbers are

naturally made assistant to it, that they become abettors of treason,

assistant to rebellion and invasion, then it is certainly time to

speak, for the very employment becomes a crime, and we are obliged

to expose a sort of men who are more dangerous than a whole nation

of enemies abroad, an evil more formidable than the pestilence, and,

in their practice, more fatal to the public, than an invasion of

Spaniards.

It is said by some, that the principal leaders in the jobbing trade

at that time, and to whom most part of the satire in this work ought

to be pointed, are Whigs, members of Parliament, and friends to the

government; and that, therefore, I had best have a care of what I say

of them.

My first answer is, So I will. I will have a care of them; and, in

the next place, let them have a care of me; for if I should speak the

whole truth of some of them, they might be Whigs; but I dare say they

would be neither P—— men, or friends to the government very long; and

it is very hard his Majesty should not be told what kind of friends

to him such men are.

Besides, I deny the fact. These men friends to the government! _Jesu

Maria!_ The government may be friendly to them in a manner they do

not deserve; but as to their being friends to the government, that

is no more possible than the Cardinal Alberoni or the Chevalier de

St. George are friends to the government; and, therefore, without

reflecting upon persons, naming names, or the like,—there will be

no need of names, the dress will describe them,—I lay down this

new-fashioned proposition, or postulatum, take it which way you

please, that I will make it out by the consequences of what I am

going to say.

1. That stock-jobbing, as it is now practised, and as is generally

understood by the word stock-jobbing, is neither less or more than

high-treason in its very nature, and in its consequences.

2. That the stock-jobbers, who are guilty of the practices I am

going to detect, are eventually traitors to King George, and to his

government, family, and interest, and to their country, and deserve

to be used at least as confederates with traitors, whenever there are

any alarms of invasions, rebellions, or any secret practices against

the government, of what kind soever.

This is a black charge, and boldly laid, and ought therefore to be

effectually made out, which shall be the work of a few pages in the

following sheets.

1. I lay down this as a rule, which I appeal to the laws of reason

to support, that all those people who, at a time of public danger,

whether of treasonable invasion from abroad, or traitorous attempts

to raise insurrections at home, shall willingly and wittingly abet,

assist, or encourage the traitors invading or rebelling, are equally

guilty of treason.

2. All those who shall endeavour to weaken, disappoint, and disable

the government in their preparations, or discourage the people in

their assisting the government to oppose the rebels or invaders, are

guilty of treason.

All that can be alleged in contradiction to this,—and perhaps that

could not be made out neither,—is, that they are not traitors within

the letter of the law; to which I answer, if they were, I should not

satirize them, but impeach them. But if it appears that they are as

effectually destructive to the peace and safety of the government,

and of the king’s person and family, as if they were in open war with

his power, I do the same thing, and fully answer the end proposed.

As there are many thieves besides housebreakers, highwaymen, lifters,

and pickpockets, so there are many traitors besides rebels and

invaders, and, perhaps, of a much worse kind; for, in a dispute

between a certain lord and a woman of pleasure in the town, about the

different virtue of the sexes, the lady insisted that the men were

aggressors in the vice, and that, in plain English, if there were no

whore-masters, there would be no whores; so, in a word, if there were

no parties at home, no disaffection, no traitors among ourselves,

there would be no invasions from abroad.

Now, I will suppose for the purpose only, that the people I am

speaking of were not disaffected to the government; I mean, not

originally and intentionally pointing their intention at the

government; nay, that they are hearty Whigs, call them as we please;

yet, if it appear they are hearty knaves, too, will do any thing

for money, and are, by the necessity of their business, obliged, or

by the vehement pursuit of their interest, that is to say, of their

profits, pushed upon things as effectually ruinous and destructive to

the government, as the very buying arms and ammunition by a protest

Jacobite, in order to rebellion, could be, are they not traitors even

in spite of principle, in spite of the name of Whig; nay, in spite of

a thousand meritorious things that might otherwise be said of them,

or done of them?

A gunsmith makes ten thousand firelocks in the Minories, the honest

man may be a Whig, he designs to sell them to the government to lay

up in the tower, or to kill Spaniards, or any of the rest of the

king’s enemies; a merchant comes and buys some of them, and says they

are for the West Indies, or to sell into France. But upon inquiry, it

appears they are bought for rebellion; the undesigning gunsmith comes

into trouble, of course, and it will be very hard for him to prove

the negative, that when he has furnished the rebels with arms, he had

no share in the rebellion.

To bring this home to the case in view, who were the men who, in

the late hurry of an expected invasion, sunk the price of stock

fourteen or fifteen per cent.? Who were the men that made a run upon

the Bank of England, and pushed at them with some particular pique,

too, if possible, to have run them down, and brought ’em to a stop

of payment? And what was the consequences of these things? Will

they tell us that running upon the bank, and lowering the stocks,

was no treason? We know that, literally speaking, those things are

no treason. But is there not a plain constructive treason in the

consequences of it? Is not a wilful running down the public credit,

at a time when the nation is threatened with an invasion from abroad,

and rebellion at home? Is not this adding to the terror of the

people? Is not this disabling the government, discouraging the king’s

friends, and a visible encouragement of the king’s enemies? Is not

all that is taken from the credit of the public, in such an occasion,

added to the credit of the invasion? Does not every thing that

weakens the government strengthen its enemies? And is not every step

that is taken in prejudice of the king’s interest a step taken in aid

of the designed rebellion? The kindest thing that can be said of a

certain triumvirate of jobbers, whose hands have been deepest in this

part of the work, and who, indeed, had more obligations upon them

than any other men in the town, to have assisted the public interest

and advanced the credit of the nation, is, that they did not think

what they did, and that this excuse may not serve them another time,

I may soon furnish them with an anatomy of some of the conduct of

that little body of Number Three, that when they see their mistakes

with the eyes that other men see them, they may at their leisure give

a better turn to the measures of unbounded avarice.

I now, that I may not be said to speak without a precedent, I humbly

refer to those moneyed gentlemen to a case recent in memory, and

even in their own, which, though indeed they may think fit to have

forgotten for a time, they will all call to mind when they hear of it

again; and this was the case of two goldsmiths (knights also, and one

of them member of Parliament, too) in Fleet Street, who pushed at the

Bank of England at the time that the Pretender’s invasion from France

was in its preparation. One of them, it was said, had gathered a

quantity of Bank-bills, to the value of near £100,000, and the other

a great sum, though not so many, and, it was said, resolved to demand

them all at once.

Let the gentlemen I point at look back to the printed papers that

year; let them inquire what construction was put upon it; let them

inquire how the government resented it; how my Lord Treasurer

Godolphin looked upon it as a mine formed to blow up the queen’s

affairs, and how, in a word, all the friends of the government took

it to be such a step in favor of the Pretender, as was impossible to

consist with duty to the queen.

Let them inquire farther, with what difficulty Sir R—— Ho—— wiped

off the imputation of being a favorer of the rebellion, and how

often, in vain, he protested he did it with no such view, and how

hard the Whigs were to believe him. Sir F—— C——d, indeed, carried

it with a higher hand, and afterwards pretended to refuse the bills

of the Bank; but still declared he did it as a goldsmith, and as a

piece of justice to himself in some points in which the Bank had, as

he alleged, used him ill. But, in general, it was looked upon as an

open affront to the government, and an abetting and countenancing the

invasion of the Pretender from abroad, and the rebellion intended at

home. Nor was the government, much less were the authors of private

papers and prints, wanting in letting them know it; nay, if I am not

misinformed, they were threatened with being treated as enemies to

the government; and if things had gone on to extremities, they had

doubtless been marked out as persons the government were to take care

of.

Now I only speak in plainer words; it was said then, that such men

as endeavoured to run down the public credit were enemies to the

government. I know no distinction in the case, that should require

so much tenderness. Every subject of King George, who is at the same

time an enemy to King George, is a traitor; and every overt act of

that enmity, it being his duty to his utmost to favor, aid, and

support the government, is an overt act of treason, let it be gilded

over with what fine words the persons please, ’tis the same thing, if

it is not literal treason, and within reach of the statute, yet the

crime is in itself of the same nature.

And let any one tell me what is the difference between two dealers

in Paris credit in the time of a French invasion, and three dealers

in paper credit in the time of a Spanish invasion, or what sanctity

in Birchin Lane more than in Fleet Street, that one should be a

protection for the same practice that was resented so justly in

another.

Were those stock-jobbers sincerely and heartily in the interest of

King George and his government, as they pretend loudly, what run

could there be upon the Bank, what ebb of credit, what sinking of

stock? The honest Whigs, who were friends to the government at that

time, mentioned above, who not only knew their duty, but how to make

it seasonable and useful, acted after another manner. When others

ran upon the Bank with all the fury possible, they carried all the

money thither they could gather up; nay, I could name a man in this

city, who, having but £500 in the world, carried it all into the Bank

to support the credit of the public; and the story being told to

her Majesty by the late Lord Treasurer Godolphin, the sense of such

fidelity so moved the queen, that she sent him a hundred pounds as

a gift, a royal token of her accepting such an act of loyalty; and

caused my Lord to give him an obligation from the Treasury to repay

him the whole £500 if any disaster to the Bank should have made it

doubtful.

Where ’s the like courage and conduct to be found now? Is it in

being? Are the gentlemen less able? Or is it that they have not the

same zeal for King George as that honest citizen had for the queen?

Or do they doubt the king being as sensible of the service? Or what

is the matter that the public credit had rather met with injurious

juggling and jobbing upon it, than real support, either from Exchange

Alley, Birchin Lane, or some other places less noted?

Let those men reflect a little upon the circumstances the public

credit must have been in by such mismanagement, if the Spanish

attempt had been made, and if these easterly Protestant winds had not

chopped in, by which Providence has given the government time to put

itself in a posture of defence, so as now not to be afraid of them;

and if the capital stock of the persons interested in the funds is

now sunk a million in the real value of them as they stood before

even at the market, which is nothing but what the matter of fact will

justify, to what degree would the same current, if it had gone on,

have sunk the estates of all the moneyed men in England?

In what manner would money have been raised upon a new credit for

any immediate exigencies that might have happened? And should the

government have been supported,—nay, though the Parliament had

granted funds,—while these men had made all credit ebb, perhaps, to

twenty-five or thirty per cent. discount? And is not this, then, a

species of treason and rebellion?

It was very remarkable, that, in the juncture of those things, the

Jacobites could not refrain taking notice how easy it was to set

the citizens plundering the Bank, and even the Exchequer, too; for,

had this gone on, the funds, which are, in effect, the Exchequer

itself, would have gone down hill hand in hand with the Bank; credit

would have borne equal pace in one as well as in the other; and the

government would no more have been able to borrow, than the Bank

would have been able to pay.

It is scarce fit to enter into a description of all the mischievous

consequences which necessarily follow running down the public credit,

in case of such dangers as I have mentioned above. If I should fully

describe them, it would appear incredible. Every one will allow that

this practice of the jobbers, carried on a little farther, would

indeed appear to be the worst kind of treason.

But it is needful, after having said thus much of the crime, to say

something of the place, and then a little of the persons, too. The

centre of the jobbing is in the kingdom of Exchange Alley, and its

adjacencies. The limits are easily surrounded in about a minute and a

half, viz., stepping out of Jonathan’s into the Alley, you turn your

face full south; moving on a few paces, and then turning due east,

you advance to Garraway’s; from thence, going out at the other door,

you go on still east into Birchin Lane; and then halting a little

at the Sword-blade Bank, to do much mischief in fewest words, you

immediately face to the north, enter Cornhill, visit two or three

petty provinces there in your way west, and thus having boxed your

compass, and sailed round the whole stock-jobbing globe, you turn

into Jonathan’s again; and so, as most of the great follies of life

oblige us to do, you end just where you began.

But this is by way of digression; and even still, before I come to

the main case, I am obliged to tell you that, though this is the

sphere of the jobbers’ motion, the orb to which they are confined,

and out of which they cannot well act in their way, yet it does not

follow but that men of foreign situation (I mean foreign as to them,

I do not mean foreign as to nation); nay, some whose lustre is said

to be too bright for the hemisphere of a coffee-house, have yet their

influence there, and act by substitutes and representatives. But

first I must speak to originals.

C——, a man of brass sufficient for much more business than he can

be trusted with, is said to manage for three blue ribbons, and for

four or five cash-keepers, who tell more money than their own. He

fetches and carries with such indefatigable application, that he

is said never to fail his appointments to a minute, however remote

from one another. Wherever he appears, he makes an Exchange Alley in

his person, and a court in his audience; he is himself a Jonathan’s

coffee-house in little; though he be at a cockpit, he realizes

Exchange Alley in every place, and yet he rather is directed than

directs; and, like a certain great general, famed for more fire than

phlegm, is fitter to drive than to lead.

S—— has twice the head, but not half the business as C—— is said to

have, yet he gets more money for himself, and C—— gets more for other

folks. S—— is as cunning as C—— is bold, and the reserve of one with

the openness of the other, makes a complete Exchange Alley man. C——

jumps at every thing, and as he got the start of the world at his

beginning, by venturing more than he was worth, so he deals now with

all men as if they ventured more than they are worth. Originally he

was a bite, which, in modern language, is a sharper; or, being fully

interpreted, may signify the head-class of the fraternity called

pickpockets.

T——, a gamester of the same board, acts in concert with C—— and S——,

and makes together a true triumvirate of modern thieving. He inherits

the face of C——, with the craft of S——, but seems to take state upon

him, and acts the reserved part more than either; yet even this, too,

is all grimace, for wherever he can be sure to kill, he can’t fawn

like an Irishman.

They are all three of yesterday in their characters, yet they are old

in their crime, viz., of resolving to be rich at the price of every

man they can bubble. Their first blow was aimed at the Bank, but

there they were outwitted; and the great Lord Treasurer Godolphin, in

the late reign, gave them their just characters from that action. The

defeat they met with there sticks so close to them, that they reserve

the measures of their revenge, not to cool, no, not till the charter

of the Bank shall expire.

However, their wings being clipped by the clause then obtained in an

Act of Parliament,—that no society, corporation, &c., should issue

out bills of credit as a bank, but the Bank of England only,—they

were obliged ever since to turn stock-jobbers, or, if we may speak

properly of them, they are the stock-jobbers’ masters; for they have

so many bear-skins pawned to them at a time, so much stock deposited

with them upon bottomrée, as it might be called, that indeed they may

be called the city pawnbrokers; and I have been told, that they have

had fifty stock-jobbers and brokers bound hand and foot, and laid in

heaps at their doors at a time.

The next trick they tried, and which was, indeed, the masterpiece of

their knavery, was the getting an assignment of the forfeited estates

in Ireland into their hands. Indeed, they began the world upon this

prospect, and expected to have had the whole kingdom of Ireland

mortgaged to them. But here, too, they were disappointed, and had

they not found a man that had as much money as themselves, and more

honesty, that bargain of the forfeited estates had been the last they

had made in the world.

The endeavours they use to cheat that gentleman, after he had

delivered them from a blow that would have blown them up, is

another black part of their story that remains to be told, for the

illustration of their character, at another time; but in the interim,

’t is enough to say, that he who delivered them as fools, knew how to

deliver himself from them as knaves; and so they were dropped out of

the Irish bargain, to their great mortification.

Now they stand ready, as occasion offers, and profit presents, to

stock-job the nation, cozen the Parliament, ruffle the Bank, run up

and down stocks, and put the dice upon the whole town.

They had another flap with a Fox-tail, to the scandal of their

politics, in the late vote about the tickets of the lottery which

I mentioned above. What market they will make of it is well enough

known. But the plot was never the less cunning, and ’t is certain the

knavery is not the less visible for the miscarriage. I come next to

their more modern management.

Whenever they call in their money, the stock-jobbers must sell; the

bear-skin men must commute, and pay differences money; then down

come the stocks, tumbling two or three per cent.; then the tools

must sell and their masters buy; the next week they take in stocks

again, then the jobbers buy, and the managers sell. Thus the jobbers

bite their friends, and these men bite the jobbers, _qui sarpat

sharpabitur_,—Exchange Alley Latin: they that are let into the secret

will understand it.

The truth is, it has been foretold by cunning men, who often see

what can’t be hid, that these men, by a mass of money which they

command of other people’s, as well as their own, will, in time, ruin

the jobbing trade. But ’t will be only like a general visitation,

where all distempers are swallowed up in the plague, like a common

calamity, that makes enemies turn friends, and drowns lesser

grievance in the general deluge. For if the reprisal trade should

adjourn from Exchange Alley to Birchin Lane, it may seem to be like

the banishing usury from the city of Rome, which transferred it to

a Jew at Genoa, a monk at Naples, and a banker at Venice, who, it

was said, had no less than seven-and-twenty principalities in Italy

mortgaged to them at a time, besides two kingdoms, seven duchies, and

the jewels of the crown of France.

Having thus given the blazing characters of three capital sharpers of

Great Britain, knaves of lesser magnitude can have no room to shine;

the Alley throngs with Jews, jobbers, and brokers; their names are

needless, their characters dirty as their employment: and the best

thing that I can yet find to say of them is, that there happens to

be two honest men among them,—Heavens preserve their integrity; for

the place is a snare, the employment itself fatal to principle, and,

hitherto, the same observation which I think was very aptly made upon

the Mint, will justly turn upon them,—that many an honest man has

gone in to them, but cannot say that I ever knew one come an honest

man out from them.

But to leave them a little, and turn our eyes another way, is it

not surprising to find new faces among these scandalous people, and

persons even too big even for our reproof? Is it possible that stars

of another latitude should appear in our hemisphere? Had it been Sims

or Bowcher, or gamesters of the drawing-rooms or masquerades, there

had been little to be said; or had the groom-porters been transposed

to Garraway’s and Jonathan’s, it had been nothing new; true gamesters

being always ready to turn their hand to any play. But to see

statesmen turn dealers, and men of honor stoop to the chicanery of

jobbing; to see men at the offices in the morning, at the P—— house

about noon, at the cabinet at night, and at Exchange Alley in the

proper intervals, what new phenomena are these? What fatal things may

these shining planets (like the late great light) foretell to the

state and to the public; for when statesmen turn jobbers, the state

may be jobbed.

It may be true that a treasurer or cash-keeper may be trusted with

more money than he is worth, and many times it is so; and if the man

be honest, there may be no harm in it: but when a treasurer plays

for more money than he is worth, they that trust him run a risk of

their money, because, though he may an honest man, he may be undone.

I speak of private, not public treasurers.

Indeed, it requires some apology to say such a one may be an honest

man; it would be hard to call him an honest man, who plays away any

man’s money that is not his own, or more than he is able to pay again

with his own. But if it be dishonest to play it away, that is, lose

it at play, ’tis equally dishonest to play with it, whether it be

lost or no; because, in such a case, he that plays for more than

he can pay, his master runs the hazard more than himself; nay, his

master runs an unequal hazard, for if the money be lost, ’tis the

master’s, if there is gain, ’tis the servant’s.

Stock-jobbing is play; a box and dice may be less dangerous, the

nature of them are alike a hazard; and if they venture at either what

is not their own, the knavery is the same. It is not necessary, any

more than it is safe, to mention the persons I may think of in this

remark; they who are the men will easily understand me.

In a word, I appeal to all the world, whether a man that is

intrusted with other men’s money (whether public or private is not

the question) ought to be seen in Exchange Alley. Would it not be

a sufficient objection to any gentleman or merchant, not to employ

any man to keep his cash, or look after his estate, to say of him he

plays, he is a gamester, or he is given to gaming and stock-jobbing,

which is still worse, gives the same, or a stronger ground of

objection in like cases.

Again, are there fewer sharpers and setters in Exchange Alley than

at the Groom Porters? Is there less cheating in stock-jobbing than

at play? Or, rather, is there not fifty times more? An unentered

youth coming to deal in Exchange Alley is immediately surrounded with

bites, setters, pointers, and the worst set of cheats, just as a

young country gentleman is with bawds, pimps, and spongers, when he

first comes to town. It is ten thousand to one, when a forward young

tradesman steps out of his shop into Exchange Alley, I say ’t is ten

thousand to one but he is undone: if you see him once but enter the

fatal door, never discount his bills afterwards, never trust him with

goods at six months’ pay any more.

If it be thus dangerous to the mean, what is it to the great? I see

only this difference, that in the first the danger is private, in the

latter public.

It has not been many years since elections for members of —— came

to market in Exchange Alley, as current as lottery-tickets now,

and at a price, like these, much above what any Parliament allowed

them to go at. While this was carried on, a great many honest men

exclaimed against it, and exposed it; nay, several Acts of Parliament

were proposed for regulating elections, and preventing bribery and

corruption; but all this would not do, and this, indeed, was one of

the happy consequences of that otherwise necessary act for triennial

Parliaments; and I firmly believe, that it is owing very much to the

late suspending that act for a time, that these things are not come

to market again.

It may easily be remembered, that the first occasion of the Exchange

Alley men engaging in the case of elections of members was in King

William’s time, on the famous disputes which happened between the Old

East India Company and the New; which, having held a great while,

and having embarrassed, not the city only, but the whole nation, and

even made itself dangerous to the public business, it was expected

it should be fully decided by the House of Commons. To this end, the

members of both companies, with all the trick, artifice, cunning, and

corruption, that money and interest could arm them with, bestirred

themselves to be chosen members.

Brokers rid night and day from one end of the kingdom to the other,

to engage gentlemen to bribe corporations, to buy off competitors,

and to manage the elections. You will see the state of things at that

time, and the danger this stock-jobbing wickedness had brought the

public to, if you please to read the following exclamation of the

honest freeholders at that time, which was presented to the public

by way of complaint. The thing was laid before the king first, and

before the Parliament afterwards; and it was his Majesty’s sense of

the consequence, that made him resolve to bring the two East India

Companies to unite their stocks; for, in a word, the stock-jobbers

embroiled the whole nation.

There was a book published some years ago, and when the stock-jobbing

people were thought as willing, yet not quite so daring or so

cunning, as they are now; it was entitled, “The Villany of the

Stock-jobbers.” Indeed, it set them out in their true colors, and for

some time gave them a little shock; for the truth was, they jobbed

King William and the government at that time at such a rate, that,

in spite of the invincible valor and resolution of the soldiery,

in spite of the most glorious prince and most vigilant general the

world had ever seen, yet the enemy gained upon us every year; the

funds were run down, the credit jobbed away in Exchange Alley,

the king and his troops devoured by mechanics, and sold to usury;

tallies lay bundled up like Bath faggots in the hands of brokers and

stock-jobbers; the Parliament gave taxes, laid funds, but the loans

were at the mercy of those men; and they showed their mercy, indeed,

by devouring the king and the army, the Parliament, and, indeed, the

whole nation, bringing that great prince sometimes to that exigence,

through unexpressible extortions that were put upon him, that he has

even gone into the field without his equipage, nay, even without his

army; the regiments have been unclothed when the king has been in the

field, and the willing, brave English spirit, eager to honor their

country, and follow such a king, have marched even to battle without

either stockings or shoes, while his servants have been every day

working in Exchange Alley, to get his own money of the Stock-jobbers,

even after all the horrible demands of discount have been allowed;

and, at last, scarce fifty per cent. of the money granted by

Parliament has come into the Exchequer, and that late, too late for

that service, and by driblets, till the king has been tired of the

delay, and been even ready to give up the cause.

We have just now had a test of their cunning on the subject of the

invasion. These were the men that made the first advantage of the

news; immediately those that were to put stock upon any man at a high

price tendered it, the accepters, forced by the demand, call in their

money on their hand, pay the difference, the price falls, a general

run upon the Bank follows, and stock-jobbing began it.

Say this was no design, yet if every alarm of the foolish, or the

timorous, or the false, is capable to set the humor afloat by the

agency of Exchange Alley, is as dangerous to the public safety as a

magazine of gunpowder is to a populous city.

But if it be by design, then, whenever the Pretender is to be pawned

upon us by any foreign power that can but talk of lending five or six

thousand men, our public credit is at his mercy, by the agency of

Exchange Alley and the brokers.

The story of the invasion from Spain, we hope, is now over. Indeed,

at the worst, I saw no such reason to be surprised to that degree

as was the case here. Let us look back, and see what injury to the

public has the very rumor been! what damage to credit! what stop to

trade! what interruption to our general commerce! besides sinking

above a million sterling upon our estates; and every farthing of

this is occasioned by the stock-jobbers, and in the consequence of

their contrivance, and by no other means; for as to the design of

an invasion, or that they resolved to come hither at all, though we

have evident proofs of that, because some of them have been actually

landed, yet we cannot yet resolve the question positively, whether it

was ever worth our being so much alarmed, as we have been in Exchange

Alley.

While these sheets were at the press, we had another little test of

their knavery to the public; and it is not at all owing to them that

the thing ran no farther. The contrary winds and storms, &c., had

disappointed the king’s enemies, and the Spanish fleet was driven

back to Spain in a shattered and defeated condition, as appears

by the public account of those things: but in the interval of this

news came an account, on the other hand, that some of the party

were arrived in Scotland, that they had beat it up, notwithstanding

all the opposition of nature, the hindrances of winds and seas.

Immediately stocks fell two per cent., nor did the good news of

the defeated return of the rest animate these men to keep up the

interest, by which it appears that they are acted more by the bad

principle than by the good; that they choose rather to do evil than

to do good; that they sink faster than they rise, and are willinger

to do harm than good to the government.

From whence I infer, that the government, looking upon them as they

really are, rather enemies than friends to the general interest,

should rather incline to root them out than preserve them. AMEN.

ENGLISH FUNDS.

HIGHEST AND LOWEST PRICE OF THREE PER CENTS IN EACH YEAR, FROM 1731

TO 1848.

Highest. Lowest.

1731 99 94

1732 101 96

1733 103 92

1734 94 90

1735 98 92

1736 113 100

1737 107 105

1738 106 102

1739 105 97

1740 101 98

1741 101 98

1742 102 98

1743 103 100

1744 99 90

1745 92 85

1746 89 75

1747 86 81

1748 91 76

1749 102 91

1750 101 98

1751 103 97

1752 106 101

1753 106 104

1754 104 102

1755 101 90

1756 90 88

1757 91 86

1758 98 89

1759 88 79

1760 83 76

1761 88 66

1762 87 63

1763 96 82

1764 86 80

1765 91 85

1766 90 87

1767 91 87

1768 93 88

1769 89 84

1770 87 78

1771 88 81

1772 95 87

1773 87 86

1774 89 86

1775 90 87

1776 90 81

1777 80 76

1778 72 61

1779 64 59

1780 63 60

1781 59 56

1782 61 53

1783 68 58

1784 57 54

1785 71 55

1787 78 69

1789 81¼ 71⅝

1790 80⅞ 70½

1791 89¾ 75¾

1792 97¼ 72½

1793 81 70½

1794 72⅜ 62¾

1795 70½ 61

1796 70⅝ 53¼

1797 56½ 47½

1798 58 47¼

1799 69 52⅝

1800 67¼ 60

1801 70 54¼

1802 79 66

1803 73 50¼

1804 58⅞ 53¾

1805 62 57

1806 64⅝ 58½

1807 64⅜ 57⅝

1808 69⅛ 62⅝

1809 70⅜ 63⅜

1810 71 63¼

1811 66¾ 61¾

1812 63 55⅛

1813 67½ 54½

1814 72½ 61½

1815 65¾ 53⅞

1816 64⅝ 59½

1817 84¼ 62

1818 82 73

1819 79 64⅞

1820 70¼ 65⅝

1821 78¾ 68¾

1822 83 75⅜

1823 85¾ 72

1824 96⅞ 84¾

1825 94¼ 75

1826 84½ 73⅞

1827 89½ 76¾

1828 88⅜ 80⅞

1829 94¼ 85⅝

1830 94¼ 77½

1831 84¾ 74⅞

1832 85¾ 81⅝

1833 91¼ 84¼

1834 93 87½

1835 92⅞ 89¼

1836 92¼ 86⅝

1837 93⅞ 87⅞

1838 95¼ 90⅝

1839 93⅞ 89¼

1840 93⅛ 85¾

1841 90½ 87¼

1842 95⅛ 88

1843 97⅛ 92⅛

1844 101¼ 96½

1845 100⅝ 91⅞

1846 97¾ 93¼

1847 94 78¾

1848 89½ 80

LOANS RAISED SINCE 1793, WITH THE RATES OF INTEREST.

Year. Amount. Per cent.

1793 £4,500,000 £4 3_s._ 4_d._

1794 11,000,000 4 10 9

1795 22,600,000 4 15 8

1796 18,000,000 4 14 9

” 7,500,000 4 12 2

1797 18,000,000 5 12 6

” 16,120,000 6 6 10

1798 17,000,000 6 4 9

1799 3,000,000 5 12 5

” 15,500,000 5 5 0

1800 20,500,000 4 12 2

1801 28,000,000 5 5 6

1802 25,000,000 3 19 2

1803 12,000,000 5 2 0

1804 14,500,000 5 9 2

1805 22,500,000 5 3 2

” 1,500,000 5 16 4

1806 20,000,000 4 19 7

1807 14,200,000 4 14 7

” 1,500,000 4 16 4

1808 10,500,000 4 14 6

1809 14,600,000 4 11 7

1810 13,400,000 4 4 2

1811 12,000,000 4 13 6

1812 22,500,000 5 5 7

1813 27,000,000 5 8 4½

” 22,000,000 5 6 2

1814 24,000,000 4 14 1

1815 36,000,000 5 12 4

1835 15,000,000 ” ” ”

1847 8,000,000 3 7 6

A LIST OF ACTS RELATIVE TO BROKERS.

13 Edward I. Statute 5 Anno 1284.

1 James I. ” 21 1604.

8 and 9 William III. ” 32 1697, expired 1707.

6 Anne ” 16 1707.

10 ” ” 19 1711.

6 George I. ” 18 1720.

3 George II. ” 31 1730, for Bristol.

7 George II. ” 8 1739.

DIRECTORS OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND

FROM 1694 TO 1847.

Sir John Houblon 1694

Michael Godfrey ”

Sir Thomas Abney ”

Sir James Bateman ”

Brooke Bridges ”

George Boddington ”

James Denew ”

Sir Henry Furnese ”

Sir William Gore ”

Thomas Goddard ”

Sir Gilbert Heathcote ”

Sir William Hedges ”

Sir James Houblon ”

Sir John Huband ”

Abraham Houblon ”

Sir Theodore Janssen ”

John Knight ”

Samuel Lethieullier ”

John Lordell ”

William Patterson ”

Robert Raworth ”

Sir William Scawen ”

Obadiah Sedgwick ”

John Smith ”

Nathaniel Tench ”

Sir John Ward ”

Henry Cornish 1695

Edward Clarke ”

Sir John Cope, Sen. ”

Peter Godfrey ”

Anthony Stevens 1695

Sir William Ashhurst 1697

Robert Bristow ”

Samuel Bultell ”

John Page ”

Sir Francis Eyles ”

John Shipman ”

Sir Nathaniel Gould ”

Samuel Lock ”

Sir Peter Delme 1698

William Dawsonne ”

Francis Stratford ”

Peter Gott ”

Sir Richard Levett ”

John Devinck 1699

John Rudge ”

Richard Perry ”

John Reynardson 1700

William Desbouverie ”

Josiah Diston 1701

John Gould ”

John Hanger ”

Humphrey South ”

Sir Robert Clayton 1702

Sir Gerard Conyers ”

Abraham Hill ”

Samuel Heathcote ”

Charles Chambrelan 1703

Sir William Hodges ”

Sir Charles Peers 1705

Sir Thomas Scawen 1705

Sir John Cope, Jun. 1706

James Dolliffe 1708

John Emilie ”

William Gore 1709

Sir Justus Beck 1710

William Henry Comellissen ”

John Dolben ”

Jeremiah Powell ”

Sir Denis Dutry 1711

Heneage Fetherstone ”

Sir Philip Jackson ”

John Ward, Jun. ”

Sir George Thorold ”

Mr. Robert Atwood 1712

Richard Cary ”

Sir Joseph Hodges ”

Sir Randolph Knipe ”

Christopher Lethieullier ”

Matthew Raper ”

John Edmonds 1713

Sir Richard Houblon ”

Richard Chiswell 1714

Sir William Jolliff ”

Henry Lyell ”

William Thompson ”

Sir John Eyles 1715

Mr. Barrington Eaton 1716

John Francis Fauquier ”

Humphrey Morice ”

Moses Raper ”

Sir Joseph Eyles 1717

Sir William Humphreys 1719

Richard Du Cane 1720

Samuel Holden ”

Bryan Benson 1721

Thomas Cooke ”

Delillers Carbonnel 1722

Nathaniel Gould ”

Henry Herring ”

Hon. Horatio Townshend ”

Sir Edward Bellamy 1723

Matthew Howard ”

John Olmuns ”

Sir Francis Forbes 1724

William Fawkener ”

Sir John Heathcote 1725

John Nicoll 1726

Sir Francis Porten ”

Stamp Brooksbank 1728

James Gaultier ”

William Hunt ”

William Snelling ”

Clement Boehm 1729

Joseph Paice, Jun. 1730

Matthew Raper ”

James Spilman ”

Robert Alsop 1731

John Bance ”

Henry Neale 1732

Robert Thornton ”

Charles Savage 1733

Benjamin Lethieullier 1734

Benjamin Longuet ”

Sir John Thompson ”

Christopher Tower ”

John Eaton Dodsworth ”

Frederick Frankland 1736

Samuel Trench ”

Alexander Sheafe 1737

Richard Chiswell, Jun. 1738

Sir John Lequesne ”

Benjamin Mee ”

Mark Weyland ”

Claude Fonnereau 1739

Charles Palmer ”

John South ”

Matthew Beachcroft 1741

Robert Nettleton ”

Thomas Whateley ”

Merrik Burrell 1742

James Lever ”

Theophilus Salwey 1742

Robert Marsh 1743

James Theobald ”

Robert Salusbury 1744

Peter Thomas ”

Bartholomew Burton 1746

Godfrey Thornton 1748

John Weyland ”

Thomas Winterbottom 1749

Charles Boehm 1750

Matthew Clairmont ”

Samuel Handley ”

Richard Stratton ”

Harry Thompson ”

Sir Samuel Fludyer 1753

John Sargent ”

William Cooper 1754

Philip De la Haize ”

Sir Thomas Chitty 1755

Peter Du’Cane ”

Edward Payne 1756

Thomas Plurner ”

Peter Theobald ”

Robert Dingley 1757

James Sperling ”

Henry Plant 1759

Samuel Beachcroft 1760

Gustavus Brander 1761

Daniel Booth ”

John Cornwall ”

Peter Gaussen ”

James Haughton Langston ”

Edmund Wilcox ”

William Bowden 1763

William Ewer ”

Richard Neave ”

John Fisher 1764

Christopher Hake, Jun. ”

Thomas Thomas 1765

Edward Darell 1767

William Halhed ”

Lyde Browne 1768

George Drake ”

George Hayter ”

Benjamin Hopkins ”

George Peters ”

Mark Weyland ”

Roger Boehm 1769

Matthew Howard ”

Benjamin Branfill 1770

William Snell ”

Samuel Bosanquet 1771

Martyn Fonnereau ”

Godfrey Thornton 1772

Daniel Giles, Jun. 1774

Christopher Puller ”

Thomas Dea 1775

Richard Clay 1776

Thomas Raikes ”

Benjamin Mee, Jun. 1777

John Sargent, Jun. 1788

William Cooke 1780

Samuel Thornton ”

Thomas Scott Jackson ”

Job Matthew 1781

Joseph Nutt ”

Thomas Boddington 1782

Benjamin Winthrop ”

Beeston Long, Jun. 1784

James Maude ”

Isaac Osborne ”

Sir Brook Watson ”

John Harrison 1785

Bicknell Coney 1786

John Whitmore, Jun. ”

Peter Isaac Thellusson 1787

Moses Yeldham 1788

William Manning, Jun. 1790

John Pearce ”

John Puget ”

Thomas Lewin 1791

Peter Cazalet 1792

William Mellish 1792

Edward Simeon ”

Alexander Champion, Jun. 1794

George Dorrien ”

Jeremiah Harman ”

Nathaniel Bogle French 1796

Charles Pole ”

Thomas Amyand 1798

Thomas Langley ”

Ebenezer Maitland ”

Peter Free 1800

Jeremiah Olive ”

Henry Smith 1802

Stephen Thornton ”

John Bowden 1803

Cornelius Buller ”

Alexander Baring 1805

John Josiah Holford ”

John Baker Richards ”

Samuel Drew 1806

Henry Davidson 1807

John Stainforth ”

Sir Robert Wigram ”

John Campbell 1808

William Haldimand 1809

George Blackman 1810

William Tierney Robarts ”

John Horsley Palmer 1811

Andrew Henry Thompson ”

Sir Thomas Neave 1812

Richard Mee Raikes ”

James Pattison, Jun. 1813

William Ward 1817

Samuel Hibbert 1819

Timothy Abraham Curtis 1820

John Rae Reid ”

Sir John Henry Pelly 1821

David Barclay ”

John Cockerell ”

Henry Porcher ”

William Cotton 1822

John Benjamin Heath 1823

William R. Robinson 1825

James Morris 1827

William Thompson ”

Humphrey St. John Mildmay 1828

John Oliver Hanson 1829

Charles Pascoe Grenfell 1830

Abel Lewes Gower ”

Sheffield Neave ”

Rowland Mitchell 1833

Christopher Pearse 1834

Henry Davidson 1835

Bonamy Dobree ”

Thomson Hankey, Jun. ”

Henry James Prescott ”

Robert Barclay 1837

John Malcolmson ”

John Gellibrand Hubbard 1838

Charles Frederick Huth ”

Alfred Latham ”

Thomas Charles Smith ”

Thomas Matthias Weguelin ”

Edward Henry Chapman 1840

Kirkman Daniel Hodgson ”

William Little 1842

David Powell ”

Francis Wilson ”

Arthur Edward Campbell 1843

Thomas Tooke, Jun. ”

Henry Lancelot Holland 1844

Thomas Newman Hunt ”

ANNUAL DIVIDENDS OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND,

From 1694 to 1849 inclusive.

Per cent.

1694-1697 8

1698 7

1699 9½

1700 10¾

1701 9

1702 12

1703 16½

1704 15¾

1705 15½

1706 18¼

1707 7¾

1708 12½

1709 8½

1710 7½

1711 7

1712 8

1713 8

1714 8

1715 7¾

1716 8

1717 8

1718 8

1719 7½

1720 7½

1721 6

1722 6

1723 6

1724 6

1725 6

1726 6

1727 6

1728 5½

1729 5½

1730 5¾

1731 5¾

Dividends, with the highest and lowest prices of Bank of England

Stock.

Year. Dividend. Highest. Lowest.

1732 5¾ 152 109

1733 5½ 151 130

1734 5½ 140 132

1735 5½ 146 138

1736 5½ 151 148

1737 5½ 151 142

1738 5½ 145 140

1739 5½ 144 115

1740 5½ 144 138

1741 5½ 143 135

1742 5½ 143 136

1743 5½ 148 145

1744 5½ 148 116

1745 5½ 147 133

1746 5½ 136 125

1747 5 129 119

1748 5 129 117

1749 5 140 128

1750 5 136 131

1751 5 142 135

1752 5 149 141

1753 4½ 144 135

1754 4½ 135 130

1755 4½ 162 119

1756 4½ 121 114

1757 4½ 120 115

1758 4½ 123 116

1759 4½ 123 109

1760 4½ 114 101

1761 4½ 116 98

1762 4½ 119 91

1763 4½ 131 111

1764 4¾ 127 112

1765 5 136 126

1766 5 139 135

1767 5¼ 159 142

1768 5½ 170 158

1769 5½ 175 149

1770 5½ 153 105

1771 5½ 155 134

1772 5½ 153 144

1773 5½ 143 139

1774 5½ 146 139

1775 5½ 146 141

1776 5½ 143 134

1777 5½ 138 128

1778 5½ 120 107

1779 5½ 118 106

1780 5½ 116 109

1781 5¾ 119 105

1782 6 124 109

1783 6 134 112

1784 6 118 110

1785 6 142 111

1786 6 158 138

1787 6 160 145

1788 7 178 158

1789 7 191 169

1790 7 188 164

1791 7 204 178

1792 7 219 171

1793 7 180 161

1794 7 169 153

1795 7 180 152

1796 7 180 142

1797 7 146 115

1798 7 138 118

1799 7 176 134

1800 6¾ 175 154

1801 7 190 148

1802 7 207 178

1803 7 193 136

1804 7 169 146

1805 7 197 167

1806 7 223 191

1807 10 235 208

1808 10 240 224

1809 10 288 235

1810 10 276 273

1811 10 251 229

1812 10 232 212

1813 10 242 211

1814 10 266 234

1815 10 262 219

1816 10 262 215

1817 10 294 220

1818 10 292 207

1819 10 267 210

1820 10 226 215

1821 10 240 221

1822 10 252 235

1823 8 246 204

1824 8 245 227

1825 8 299 196

1826 8 223 193

1827 8 217 200

1828 8 215 203

1829 8 218 208

1830 8 203 194

1831 8 204 189

1832 8 208 185

1833 8 213 190

1834 8 225 211

1835 8 225 208

1836 8 219 199

1837 8 212 203

1838 8 208 201

1839 7 206 177

1840 7 179 156

1841 7 173 157

1842 7 173 165

1843 7 185 172

1844 7 211 185

1845 7 215 199

1846 7 211 199

1847 7 206½ 180

1848 7 202 183

1849 7 200 188½

* * * * *

BANK HOLIDAYS.—At the Bank of England the only holidays in

the dividend offices are Good Friday and Christmas. In the

transfer offices, besides the above, May 1st and November 1st.

East India House and Exchequer,—Good Friday and Christmas.

Custom-House,—Christmas, Good Friday, Prince of Wales’s birthday

and the Queen’s birthday, November 9th and May 24th.

IN IRELAND.—Banks, Custom-House, &c., Good Friday, Christmas, and

Queen’s birthday.

IN SCOTLAND.—New year’s day, King Charles I. martyrdom, Queen’s

marriage, Queen’s birthday, Good Friday, Charles II. restoration,

Queen’s accession, Queen’s coronation, Gunpowder Plot, and

Christmas day.

FLUCTUATIONS OF THE ENGLISH FUNDS IN 1846-47.

_Table showing the Highest and Lowest Prices of the principal Funds

of the London Market, from November, 1846, to October, 1847._

[1] _Months._

[2] _Bank Stock._

[3] _3 per ct. reduced._

[4] _3 per ct. Consols._

[5] _3 per ct. Annuities, 1726._

[6] _New 3¼ per ct._

[7] _New 5 per ct._

[8] _Long Annuities, expire 1860._

[9] _Long Annuities, 30 Years exp. 1859._

[10] _Long Annuities, 30 Years. exp. 1860._

[11] _India Stock._

[12] _South Sea Stock._

[13] _Exchequer Bills, £1,000._

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

1846:

November, {206½ 93⅞ 95 94 95⅞ 118 9⅞ 9¾ 10⅛ 258 103⅞ 14_s._

at 1½_d._

{204 93⅛ 94 94 95⅛ 118 9 9 10 255 103⅞ 6_s._ pm.

December, {207¼ 94⅞ 95½ 94⅞ 96½ 121 9⅞ 9¾ 10⅛ 254¾ 105¼ 14_s._ ”

{205 93⅞ 95 94¼ 95⅝ 121 9 9 10 254¾ 104¼ 8_s._ ”

1847:

January, {206½ 94 93¾ 91¾ 95¾ 114 9⅞ 9¾ 9¾ 254¾ 103¾ 15_s._ ”

{203½ 90¾ 91⅛ 91 93 114 9 9 9 249 100 5_s._ ”

February, {205 91⅝ 91½ 89⅜ 93½ 9⅝ 9½ 9½ 251 101¼ 10_s._ ”

{202½ 90⅝ 90⅜ 89¾ 92⅜ 9 9⅜ 9 249 100¼ par.

March, {205½ 91½ 90⅞ 88¾ 93⅜ 9⅝ 9⅜ 9⅝ 251 99¼ 7_s._ pm.

{203½ 90⅝ 88⅛ 88¾ 90⅞ 9 9⅜ 9⅛ 250 99¼ 1_s._ ”

April, {200½ 87⅜ 88¼ 88⅝ 118 9⅛ 8⅞ 9¾ 246½ 97⅜ 10_s._

at 2_d._

{190 84⅜ 85⅛ 86 118 8⅞ 8¾ 9¼ 244 95½ 1_s._ pm.

May, {196 87½ 88⅝ 85⅜ 89⅛ 117 9 8¾ 9¼ 244 98½ 10_s._dis.

{188 85¼ 86⅜ 85⅜ 87 117 8⅞ 8¾ 9 240 96¾ par.

June, {197½ 89½ 88⅞ 91¼ 118 9⅛ 9⅜ 9½ 246 12_s._ pm.

{195 86¾ 87¾ 88⅝ 113 9 8⅞ 9⅜ 246 3_s._ ”

July, {198 89½ 89¼ 87¾ 91⅝ 115 9⅛ 8⅞ 8⅞ 246½ 98⅝ 15_s._ ”

{195 88⅛ 88 86⅞ 90⅜ 115 9 8⅞ 8¾ 244 97⅜ 10_s._ ”

August, {198 89 88⅝ 90¾ 118 9⅛ 9 8⅞ 244 98⅝ 10_s._ ”

{195 86⅞ 86¼ 88⅝ 118 9 8¾ 8½ 239 95⅛ 2_s._ ”

September,{197½ 88¼ 87½ 89⅝ 112 9⅛ 9 8¾ 241 17_s._ ”

{195½ 86¾ 85⅛ 88¼ 112 9 8⅞ 8¾ 236 11_s._ ”

October, {186 82⅞ 85¾ 83⅜ 115 8½ 8½ 8¾ 238 par.

{180 78¼ 79¼ 79½ 115 8 7⅝ 8⅜ 238 30_s._dis.

1847:

November, {189 83⅞ 85½ 85½ 8⅝ 8¼ 8¾ 235 93¾ 2_s._ pm.

at 2_d._

{185 81 82 81¾ 8⅛ 8 8½ 228 91¼ 20_s._dis.

December, {189 85⅜ 86 86¾ 8⅝ 8½ 8⅞ 235 94½ 12_s._ pm.

at 3_d._

{186½ 84 85½ 85½ 8½ 8⅜ 8 235 92½ 2_s._ pm.

1848:

January, {202 89⅞ 89½ 90⅜ 90¾ 114 9 8¾ 8½ 243 96 35_s._ ”

{187 84⅞ 85⅞ 89¼ 86 108½ 8⅝ 8½ 8⅝ 227 93 12_s._ ”

February, {202 89⅞ 89⅞ 87½ 90¾ 9 8⅞ 8¾ 245 98 41_s._ ”

{191 81¾ 81½ 82½ 8½ 8⅝ 8¼ 230 95¾ 5_s._ ”

March, {194 82⅞ 83⅜ 79⅞ 83¼ 8⅞ 8½ 8½ 253 89¾ 35_s._ ”

{191 80¼ 80⅝ 82⅞ 8⅝ 8⅜ 8¼ 86 13_s._ ”

April, {189 81 82⅝ 82¾ 104 8⅜ 8¼ 8½ 231½ 88¼ 45_s._ pm.

at 2½_d._

{185½ 78½ 80 79½ 8⅛ 8 8¼ 227 85 33_s._ pm.

May, {193 82¾ 84⅜ 82½ 83⅞ 108 8⅝ 8⅜ 8¾ 234 92⅝ 47_s._ ”

{189 81½ 83¼ 80⅛ 82½ 107 8⅜ 8⅛ 8½ 229 90 30_s._ ”

June, {193 84½ 84¾ 81½ 85 111 8¾ 8⅝ 8¾ 234 92⅝ 41_s._ pm.

at 2_d._

{189 82¼ 83⅞ 81 83¼ 8¼ 8⅛ 231 90⅛ 32_s._ pm.

July, {198½ 89 88⅞ 84 89⅛ 109 9⅛ 8⅞ 8⅝ 245 97½ 52_s._ ”

{190 85 85⅞ 85⅝ 8⅜ 8½ 8⅜ 239 96⅛ 32_s._ ”

August, {199 87½ 87⅛ 87¾ 112 9 8⅝ 8¾ 243 97¼ 39_s._ ”

{196 85¼ 85⅜ 85⅜ 109 8⅝ 8⅜ 8⅜ 238 21_s._ ”

September,{198 86⅜ 86¼ 87¼ 8⅞ 8⅝ 8⅝ 240 95 31_s._ ”

{196 85⅞ 85⅝ 86½ 8¾ 8½ 8½ 235 22_s._ ”

October, {190 84¾ 86¾ 84¼ 85⅛ 112 8½ 8½ 8¾ 237 95¼ 40_s._ ”

{183 83¼ 84⅛ 84⅛ 84 108½ 8¼ 8⅛ 8½ 234 92¾ 29_s._ ”

1848:

November, {190 86¼ 87½ 85⅜ 89 8½ 8⅝ 8⅞ 237 95⅞ 45_s._ pm.

at 2_d._

{188 84⅝ 85⅞ 85⅜ 8½ 8⅜ 8⅜ 232 94 36_s._ pm.

December, {191½ 88⅞ 89⅜ 89⅜ 8⅞ 8⅝ 8⅞ 241 96¾ 42_s._ ”

{188½ 86¼ 87⅜ 89¼ 8¼ 8⅝ 8⅜ 237 94⅞ 37_s._ ”

1849:

January, {196 91⅝ 91¾ 88⅞ 92¼ 9 8⅞ 8¾ 245 98⅞ 51_s._ ”

{188½ 88⅞ 88⅞ 87¼ 89¼ 8¾ 8½ 8¼ 238¾ 96¾ 40_s._ ”

February, {197¼ 94½ 94½ 95½ 120 9⅓ 8⅞ 8¾ 249 102 53_s._ ”

{193 91⅛ 91⅛ 92¼ 116 8⅞ 8⅝ 8¼ 243 100 39_s._ ”

March, {196 92¾ 92¾ 93⅞ 119½ 9⅛ 8⅞ 8⅞ 245 100¾ 45_s._ ”

{193 91 90½ 91½ 8⅞ 8¾ 8½ 240 99⅛ 35_s._ ”

April, {194 90⅞ 93¾ 90½ 91¾ 8⅝ 8⅜ 8¾ 248 101 49_s._ ”

{191½ 90 91⅛ 90 91 9⅛ 8¼ 8⅜ 243 44_s._ ”

May, {195 91⅛ 92⅝ 91¾ 8⅝ 8⅜ 8¾ 250 100⅝ 49_s._ ”

{192½ 89¼ 90⅛ 90⅛ 8⅜ 8¼ 8¾ 245 99⅛ 44_s._ ”

June, {195 92⅝ 92¾ 89¼ 92⅝ 8¾ 8½ 8⅞ 252 100¼ 48_s._ ”

{193½ 89¼ 90⅛ 90⅛ 8⅜ 8⅜ 8¾ 250 44_s._ ”

July, {200 93¼ 93¾ 91⅜ 94⅛ 9 8⅝ 8⅝ 253¾ 103 51_s._ ”

{195 91½ 92⅛ 92¼ 8⅝ 8⅝ 8½ 251 102⅞ 44_s._ ”

August, {200 93⅛ 93 90⅛ 94⅛ 118¼ 9 8¾ 8¾ 255½ 102¾ 51_s._ ”

{198½ 92 92½ 92⅝ 8⅝ 8⅝ 8½ 252 101¼ 40_s._ ”

September,{200 92⅞ 92⅞ 89¼ 94 8⅞ 8⅝ 8⅞ 254 102⅜ 42_s._ ”

{199 92½ 93⅛ 93¾ 8⅜ 8⅝ 8½ 252 35_s._ ”

October, {198½ 91¼ 92⅝ 91 92⅜ 8½ 8¼ 8½ 257 102½ 47_s._ ”

{196 90⅛ 91⅜ 90⅞ 91¾ 8⅜ 8⅛ 8¼ 254 100¾ 41_s._ ”

FOOTNOTES:

[13] The above tract appeared in 1719.

ALPHABETICAL INDEX

TO

CHRONICLES AND CHARACTERS

OF THE

STOCK EXCHANGE.

Page

Alison, Remarks on the National Debt, 83

Annuities, Policy of, 85

Asgill, Mr., on reducing the National Debt, 87

Baily, Francis, Defence of the Brokers, 72, 81

Bank of England,—First Charter, 27th July, 1694, 9

” ” First payment of Government dividends, 23

” ” Directors of, from 1694 to 1847, 156

” ” Dividends of, from 1694 to 1849, 161

Barbier, Mr., on the National Debt, 87

Barclay and Co., Bankers, Operations of, 104

Baring and Goldsmid, Anecdotes of, 61, 75

Barings, Sketch of the House of, 75

Barnard, Sir John, Opposition to the Stock Exchange, 26

” ” Act against Stock Gambling, 27

Blackboard, Notices of the, 55, 120

Blunt, Sir John, Originator of the South-sea Bubble, 23

Bolland, James, Execution of, for forgery, 119

Bolingbroke, Remarks on the National Debt of England, 82, 84

Bonaparte, Policies on the life of, 79

Bowring, and the Greek Loan, 106

Bridgewater Canal, 90

Brokers, Acts against, 71

’Change Alley, Origin of, 10

Charitable Corporation Frauds in London, 19

Chatham, Lord, Opinions of ’Change Alley, 57

Clayton, Sir Robert, notice of, 8

Cochrane, Lord, Fraud of, 80

Consols, Highest and Lowest Prices of, for 120 years, 153

Daniels, Joseph Elkin, Fraud of, 69

Douglas, Heron, & Co., of London, Failure of, 39

Dunbar, Speculations of, 118

East India Company, Stock of, 9, 18

” ” Restriction of its Dividends, 37

Elizabeth, (Queen,) Numerous Monopolies granted by, 8

Equitable Loan Company, Charter of, 97

Exchequer Bills, First Fraud in, 17

Exchange Alley, Anatomy of, 135

Fordyce, Alexander, Fraud of, 40

Foreign Loans contracted, 17

Fox, Charles James, Anecdote of, 58

Frauds and Forgeries, 32, 40, 69, 77, 80, 100, 119

Furness, Sir Henry, Anecdote of, 11

French Revolution, Effects of the, 64

Germany, Attempted Loan for, 26

Gideon, Sampson, the Jew Broker, 33, 118

Goldsmid, Abraham and Benjamin, 59

” Suicide of, 60

Gordon, Lord George, Anecdote of, 58

Gray, Thomas, Plan for Roads, 92, 94

Greece, Loan to, 104

Guatemala, Loan to, by English Capitalists, 103

Guise, Count de, Notice of, 119

Guy, Thomas, Anecdote of, 12, 25

Hebrew Brokers, Number limited to Twelve, 42

Hume, David, Remarks on the National Debt, 84

Hume, Joseph, and the Greek Loan, 105

Johnstone, Cochrane, Fraud of, 80

Joint Stock Companies, Speculations in, 73

Life Insurance, Notices of, 125, 127

” ” Indisputable Company, 127

” ” Policies on Diseased Lives, 128

” ” Fraudulent Companies, 130

Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, 93

Loans to Continental Powers, 104, 115

” New, Frauds, &c., 44, 154

” Since 1793, and Rates of Interest, 154

Lopez, Manassez, Punishment of, 29

Lotteries, Invention of, 49

” Employed by the State, for Revenue Purposes, 47

” Evils of, and Frauds in, 49

” Abolition of, 53

” Effects of, 50

Loyalty Loan, Subscriptions to, 68

Marlborough’s (Duke of) Victories, Effects of, 21

MacGregor, Gregor, Notice of, 100

Mining Companies, Speculations in, 98

Moneyed Interest, Origin, Extravagance, and Folly of the, 7

National Debt (The), Remarks on, 1, 6, 23

” ” Proposal to reduce the Interest on, 28

” ” Increase of, 1740-1766, 32, 35

” ” Curious Proposition to pay off, 66, 86

” ” Review of, 82

” ” Smith, Paine, Hervey, Graham, on, 84

Newcastle, Duke of, Notice of, 118

Petty, Sir Henry, Proposal for a Sinking Fund, 72

Pitt, William, Policy of, 64, 65

Plomer, Sir Thomas, Fraud on, 77

Portugal, Loan to, by English Capitalists, 115

Poyais Fraud, Disastrous Effects of the, 100

Ricardo, David, Notice of, 77

Rice, John, Execution of, for Forgery, 32

Rothschild, Notices of, 109, 111

” Death of, 114

Royal Exchange, (The) Notice of, 8

Secret Service Money, 37

Sedley, Sir Charles, Speech of, 13

Sinking Fund, the Origin of the, 34, 55

Spanish Stock, Fall in, 116

Speculations of 1825, 108

South American Loans, 99, 103

South-sea Bubble, Notices of the, 23, 25

Sprot, Mark, Death of, 74

Stephenson, on Railroads, 94

Stock Exchange, Increased Importance of, 22, 76

” ” Opposed by Sir John Barnard, 26

” ” Origin of the Blackboard, 55

” ” Removal of, 67, 108

” ” Increase of Business, 1810-15, 76

” ” Morals and Manners of the, 121

” ” Rules of the Board for its Members, 124

Time Bargains, Origin of, 27

Tontines, History of, 6

Tulip Mania in Holland, Sketch of, 4

Vansittart, Mr., Modification of the Sinking Fund, 78

Walpole, Sir R., Opposition to the German Loan, 26

” ” ” to a Reduction of Interest on National Debt, 28

” ” Adoption of the Sinking Fund, 34

” ” Remarks on the National Debt, 84

Walsh, Benjamin, Trial of, for Fraud, 77

Wilkes, John, Anecdotes of, 42

William III., Modes of raising Money for War Purposes, 7

” Enormous Briberies of, 12

” Increased Taxation under, 13

” Defence of his Policy, 14

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 32 Changed: conscience of Rice took the the alarm

to: conscience of Rice took the alarm

pg 36 Changed: was carried through and approved by a phcuniary

to: was carried through and approved by a pecuniary

pg 147 Changed: said to manage for three blue ribbonds

to: said to manage for three blue ribbons