A very important question became mooted concerning these loans. On several occasions, when bargains for time were made, and the loser refused to pay his differences, the broker made them good, believing his principal was not liable under the act of Sir John Barnard. At last the question was legally argued; and it was ascertained from the decision of several judges, that the provisions of the above act did not extend to loans for foreign countries.
Francis Baily—a name as well known in the scientific as in the monetary world—retired from the Stock Exchange in 1825, and the man who, in the midst of the most exciting pursuit in the world, was worthily chosen president of the Royal Astronomical Society, sheds an honor on the class to which he belonged, and should have been an exemplar to the men with whom he associated.
As a boy, studious beyond his years, he was called—half jestingly, half seriously—the philosopher of Newbury; and, having left school at fourteen, remained in a mercantile situation until he was twenty-two, when, for the mere love of adventure, he embarked for the New World, travelled through a great part of the far West, and passed eleven months among the aborigines, without once meeting the shelter of a civilized roof.
In 1800, he went on the money market, where he soon became conspicuous, publishing, within a few years, many works which were justly regarded with great favor; and, in 1806, defended, though unsuccessfully, the rights of the brokers. In 1814, he drew up the report of the committee on the great fraud of that year, arranged the evidence against the perpetrators completely and conclusively, and was one of those men of whom the Stock Exchange—from which he retired with a fortune won by uprightness and intelligence—was not worthy.
The triumphs of Mr. Baily in his favorite pursuit are recorded in the minds of all who prize the science which he so dearly loved. A list of his labors would be misplaced in the present volume; but Sir John Herschel has recorded them in his memoir of the scientific member of that place which is too much open to the reproach, that it narrows men’s minds as much as it enlarges their purses.
CHAPTER XII.
Review of the National Debt.—Opinions.—Bolingbroke.—Financial Reform Association.—Extravagance of Government.—Schemes for paying off the National Debt.—Review of them.—Proposals for Debentures.
The period at which the present narrative has arrived does not appear ill adapted for a prospective and retrospective glance at a debt which, in 121 years, has increased from £660,000 to £800,000,000, which is the great problem of the day, and the great difficulty of legislators. It has been seen that the debt was not increased without strenuous opposition; and it need not be said that there were alarmists a century ago, as there are alarmists now; that, as each successive million was added, men were not wanting to declare the ruin of the country; or that prophets were plentiful with omens of evil. Bolingbroke wrote,—“It is impossible to look back without grief on the necessary and unavoidable consequences of this establishment, or without indignation on that mystery and iniquity which hath been raised upon it, and carried on by means of it. Who can answer that a scheme which oppresses the farmer, ruins the manufacturer, breaks the merchant, discourages industry, and reduces fraud to a system, which drains continually a portion of our national wealth away to foreigners, and draws most perniciously the rest of that immense property which was diffused among thousands into the pockets of the few,—who can answer that such a scheme will always endure? The whole art of stock-jobbing, the whole mystery of iniquity mentioned above, rises from this establishment, and is employed about the funds; and the main-springs which turn, or may turn, the artificial wheel of credit, and make the paper estates that are fastened to it rise or fall, lurk behind the veil of the treasury. That luxury which began to spread after the restoration of Charles II. hath increased ever since, from the growth of wealth among the stock-jobbers, from this system. Nothing can be more certain than this,—that national luxury and national poverty may in time establish national prostitution. The immense wealth of particular men is a circumstance which always attends national poverty, and is, in a great measure, the cause of it. We may already apply to our country what Sallust makes Cato say of Rome,—‘Public want and private wealth abound in all declining states.’”
A reference to the tracts, pamphlets, and broadsides, which were given to the world in the early part of the century, will prove that public attention was constantly drawn to the growing difficulty; but the writers committed the great error of pointing their darts at the stock-jobbers. They persisted in regarding the consequence as the cause; nor was it, Mr. Alison thinks, until after the peace of Ryswick, that the great evil was regarded with any thing like alarm. This gentleman, in his “Military Life of Marlborough,” draws the following vivid picture, and the writer can confirm it from a careful perusal of contemporary documents:—