If he knew better how to make a bargain than his customers did, that was their fault, not his. People should look before they leap, and look too with their own eyes, not attempt to borrow his; they should know his mode of business before they came to him; not come and complain afterwards.
These reflections while they clearly show the astuteness of his mind, also suggest the reasons why stock rose rapidly; and point out the means by which Mr. Broker pocketed nearly all the advance himself,—without ever retaining more than ten shares in his hands at any one time.
In time Mr. Broker became a sage, and, as a fruit of his wisdom, left behind him a code of laws which have ever since been the standard of Wall-street.
VIRTUE OF CORPORATIONS.
We shall have frequent occasion to refer to points in this code, but, for the present, will only mention, that he improved upon the great Lacedemonian, who is said to have made a law that placed the crime of stealing only in detection—Mr. Broker placed it only in the punishment. It was of no consequence that a man should be found out in his roguery—that only established his character for shrewdness—a word of modern coinage, which some silly and old fashioned people have supposed to be, only a mitigated term for dishonesty. He never became a criminal until the law reached him with punishment; and the merit of his character, as well as the measure of his success, depended entirely on the length he could go, and the frequency of his exploits, and still escape the lash of the law.—And herein is seen the peculiar virtue and particular wisdom of those contrivances called Corporations, and Joint Stock Companies, of which Mr. Broker was a great encourager. An ingenious device, wherein an imaginary body alone is made accountable for the acts of its members; while the real actors may hide behind it, as long as it has power to protect them, and scamper off without fear, when it has not. It has also this peculiar property, that, when the directors have taken to their heels, like the ignis-fatuus, the farther you pursue it the farther it recedes; and he who follows it long will, very likely, get stuck in the swamp from whose foul vapours it has been generated: and, at most, if fairly got hold of, it is never found to consist of any thing more than a worthless bit of parchment.
DISCOVERY IN NATURAL HISTORY.
We have said that Mr. Broker was a man of universal genius. In proof of which, he essentially improved the vocabulary of English; and in two particulars, conclusively shew that Johnson and Buffon are in error, viz.—that a Bear means a man who has no shares in the Stocks—one stripped—in an em-bar-assed condition, and that a Bull means a man who has more shares than he can keep, and has gored his neighbour to procure them.
His was the first Broker’s office ever established in the city of New York; and from him have descended all the race of brokers which have since congregated in the region round about Wall Street. Whether his posterity have answered Dr. Johnson’s[2] definition of the word broker, viz: “A negotiator between two parties who contrives to cheat both,” will be seen in the course of this history.
SIMPLICITY OF THE GOVERNMENT.
When the gallant Col. Nicholls had, in the name of the crown of Great Britain, taken full possession of the city and territory of New Amsterdam, and bestowed upon it the name of his patron the Duke of York; by way of conciliating the Burghers, he left them undisturbed in all their civil and domestic privileges, without embarrassing them with the intricacies of British laws. And in those days of simple legislation, the government had not yet learned the way to purchase power, and make people dishonest, by selling corporate privileges. And demagogues had not yet learned to claim the monopoly, as a reward for their intrigues. Consequently, Mr. Single-Eye, and his coadjutors in the matter of the Wall-street Stock Company, had the power of fixing things all their own way; that is, they made all their own laws, rules, and regulations, without let or hindrance of any kind. And so ingeniously were they contrived, that, by their natural operation, the money which came in by subscription, all leaked out again exactly at the right place and at the right time. Since that time, the wisdom of the Legislators of most of the states has decreed, that people shall not associate in bodies for purposes of roguery, without first buying a licence; and, under the name of Charters, they will sell licences to cheat the public, as the Pope sells plenary indulgences, to replenish a wasted Treasury, (vide the great state of Pennsylvania and the U. S. Bank.)