The learned professions take the lead in this exhibition of roguery and immorality. The spectators never tire of these displays of the general rascality. The roguish landlord, the villanous horse-dealer, the artful, knavish servant, the Priest of Low Caste, and the Doctor, afford the most common diversion. The Lawyer is generally diabolic, the Bonze a hypocrite and knave, the medical man an impostor and dealer in medicines of infallible healing power.
Much of this may be referred to the love of coarse humour—but its real base is to be found in the degradation of morals. These representations are types, and would only produce disgust, were not the rascalities represented familiar. The excesses and exaggerations are of the Play—but the types are normal and common.
One great trading place is called the Stock Exchange—another, perhaps more important, styled the Merchants' Exchange. These places are established in every large town, and the business done in them absorbs the attention of traders and people who have any property, throughout the Kingdom.
The dealings [Keet-sees] of the former relate to Certificates and Bonds. These are Pieces of Printed and Coloured Paper, which represent in the words and figures a sum of money invested in a trading concern, or a sum of money which somebody owes and promises to pay. The sum may be quite a fiction, and is usually either never to be really paid, or paid at some very remote day. However, a small sum is promised to be paid every six moons, or in twelve moons—this is for not paying the big sum.
The business of the latter relates to the buying and selling of every sort of merchandise, whether on land, or on vessels at sea.
Other great trading places deal in money, or rather in bits of Printed Paper, which promise to pay money to him who has one of these bits. These places get people to sell them these bits at a price, and then resell at a greater price—or they borrow and lend these bits, paying less for the use than they obtain. Very little money is seen—business is in Paper—another of the ingenious tricks of these trading and gambling Barbarians, perhaps the source of more dishonesty and cheating than almost any other. As the like has no existence in our Flowery Land, it will not easily be comprehended.
The chief of these places for dealing in this money-paper is called the Bank. The Government shares in the advantages of this invention. Its object is to bank up, or hoard, all the real money (gold and silver) which it can get in exchange for the bits of paper. These promise that the Bank will always return the sum of gold which the bit acknowledges to have been received. The man hands the Bank his gold-money to be kept safely till he wishes for it, and the Bank gives him the bit of Paper (which is numbered and recorded in a book). He can carry this in his pocket, but the gold-money would be too burdensome and more easily lost. The Government pledges also that the gold shall always be safely kept, to be returned whenever the bits of paper are returned. This Bank-house is immensely strong and large, built of hewn stone, and is guarded by men armed with swords and fire-arms for fear of the savage and ignorant Low-Castes.
Ordinarily, only now and again, a few persons go to the Bank and wish the gold; because if one wishes it, some one of whom he buys, or to whom he owes, will take the money-paper and hand him the difference—consequently, the paper goes from hand to hand for a long time. Everybody takes it because it is convenient, and because he thinks the gold attached to it is safe in the Government Bank-house. The confidence in Paper is called Credit. To which I shall more fully refer.
Sometimes, when a great many demand the gold, it is suddenly found that the Bank-house has it not! The promise of banking up the gold till wanted in exchange for the Paper has been broken. Down goes Credit—every kind of value shrinks at once; for the Bank has not the real money, and values have been measured by the paper!