The cost of building the Bourse as it now exists was defrayed by a subscription among the merchants of Paris, assisted by a grant from the State and from the city. Until Napoleon’s time, or, at least, from the period of the Revolution to that of the Empire, the occupation of stockbroker or agent de change was free to all who chose to take out a licence. Napoleon, however, limited the number of agents de change, or, as it turned out, the number of their firms, for it soon became the practice for several persons to club together in order to buy the necessary licence and to deposit the caution money.
The Bourse, in marked opposition to the rigid rule observed at our own Stock Exchange, was open to everyone until 1856, when the price of admission was fixed at one franc to the financial, and half a franc to the commercial department. An annual ticket of admission could be obtained for 150 francs to the financial side, and seventy-eight francs to the commercial. This species of tax was imposed with the view of restraining the passion for speculation which had sprung up among the lower classes, but it was abolished by M. Achille Fould, Napoleon III.’s able Finance Minister, in 1862.
The hours of the Bourse, as fixed by law, not being sufficiently long for the tastes or necessities of speculators, supplementary bourses under the name of Petite Bourse, have from time to time been held in the Passage de l’Opéra and on the Boulevard des Italiens. These informal assemblies are sometimes tolerated, sometimes repressed, by the Government.
Ponsard, in one of his versified comedies, describes the Paris Bourse as (to translate the poet freely)—
“A market where all merchandise is keenly bought and sold;
A genuine field of battle where instead of blood flows gold.”
