The scrip, the scrip will be blown up as well!’
One cries, ‘The cause is lost!’ Another, ‘Zounds,
Who cares? I’ve lost my four-and-fifty pounds!’
Snuffles a saint, ‘I sorrow for the cross;
But nineteen discount is a serious loss.’
Whispers a sinner, ‘Why, the thing must fall;
But, ’t was a very pretty bubble after all!’”
The following extract from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie’s “Partnership en Commandite,” will form a fitting conclusion to the history of the foreign loan excitement of 1825:—“Upwards of twenty-five millions sterling were advanced in foreign loans, of which the show of paying even the smallest dividend is scarcely kept up. Taking into account the foreign loans, the investments in foreign funds, and the amount advanced for foreign railways, about 100 millions sterling have gone out of this country in the last twenty-five years. Three fourths of this immense capital are irretrievably sunk.”
“I always,” said a retired financier of great capacity, “tell my brokers to sell when the Whigs come into office, as they are sure to lower consols with the credit of the country.” To intimate that the Whigs were in office in 1831, is to say that their financial difficulties were great. In this year curiosity was raised to know the mode which the Chancellor would adopt to meet the deficient revenue; and great was the surprise of the commercial public when this gentleman boldly proposed, that, upon every transfer of funded property, a tax of 10s. per cent. should be placed. From this source he reckoned upon £800,000. It need hardly be said, that the city received the proposal with such a burst of contemptuous derision, that the unhappy Chancellor in a very short time consented to abandon it.
In the following year the reform question startled many capitalists, and large sales of funded property were made. Some, alarmed at what appeared more like revolution than reform, when they heard of “moral demonstrations” to be made by two hundred and fifty thousand determined men; of soldiers detained in their quarters on Sunday, to sharpen their swords; of mutiny among the Scots Greys; of business suspended, and all the usual accompaniments of great changes,—determined to sell securities which a day might render worthless. The dealers narrowed their personal operations to a limit consistent with safety; while others sold all, and purchased in foreign funds. The feeling of these individuals was evinced by the fact, that they bought chiefly in Russian funds, as affording greater security.