Greece borrowed in two loans 2,800,000 pounds at 5 per cent. Russia (droll juxtaposition!) drew up the rear. She borrowed three millions and a half, but upon far more favorable terms than, with all our romance, we accorded to “Graeculus esuriens.” The Greek stock ruled * from 56 1/2 to 59.
* A corruption from the French verb “rouler.”
Into these loans, and the multitudinous mines and miscellaneous enterprises, gas, railroad, canal, steam, dock, provision, insurance, milk, water, building, washing, money-lending, fishing, lottery, annuities, herring-curing, poppy-oil, cattle, weaving, bog draining, street-cleaning, house-roofing, old clothes exporting, steel-making, starch, silk-worm, etc., etc., etc., companies, all classes of the community threw themselves, either for investment or temporary speculation, on the fluctuations of the share-market. One venture was ennobled by a prince of the blood figuring as a director; another was sanctified by an archbishop; hundreds were solidified by the best mercantile names in the cities of London, Liverpool, and Manchester. Princes, dukes, duchesses, stags, footmen, poets, philosophers, divines, lawyers, physicians, maids, wives, widows, tore into the market, and choked the Exchange up so tight that the brokers could not get in nor out, and a bare passage had to be cleared by force and fines through a mass of velvet, fustian, plush, silk, rags, lace, and broadcloth, that jostled and squeezed each other in the struggle for gain. The shop-keeper flung down his scales and off to the share-market; the merchant embarked his funds and his credit; the clerk risked his place and his humble respectability. High and low, rich and poor, all hurried round the Exchange, like midges round a flaring gas-light, and all were to be rich in a day.
And, strange to say, all seemed to win and none to lose; for nothing was at a discount except toil and self-denial, and the patient industry that makes men rich, but not in a day.
One cold misgiving fell. The vast quantities of gold and silver that Mexico, mined by English capital and machinery, was about to pour into our ports, would so lower the price of those metals that a heavy loss must fall on all who held them on a considerable scale at their present values in relation to corn, land, labor and other properties and commodities.
“We must convert our gold,” was the cry. Others more rash said: “This is premature caution—timidity. There is no gold come over yet; wait till you learn the actual bulk of the first metallic imports.” “No, thank you,” replied the prudent ones, “it will be too late then; when once they have touched our shores, the fall will be rapid.” So they turned their gold, whose value was so precarious, into that unfluctuating material, paper. This solitary fear was soon swallowed up in the general confidence. The king congratulated Parliament, and Parliament the king. Both houses rang with trumpet notes of triumph, a few of which still linger in the memories of living men.
1. “The cotton trade and iron trade were never so flourishing.”
2. “The exports surpassed by millions the highest figure recorded in' history.”
3. “The hum of industry was heard throughout the fields.”
4. “Joy beamed in every face.”