But the East India stock was the main point. Every man’s eye, when he came to the market, was upon the brokers who acted for Sir F——. Does Sir F—— sell or buy? If Sir F—— had a mind to buy, the first thing he did was to commission his brokers to look sour, shake their heads, suggest bad news from India; and at the bottom it followed, “I have commission from Sir F—— to sell out whatever I can”; and perhaps they would actually sell ten, perhaps twenty thousand pounds. Immediately the Exchange (for they were not then come to the Alley) was full of sellers; nobody would buy a shilling; till perhaps the stock would fall six, seven, eight, ten per cent., sometimes more. Then the cunning jobber had another set of men employed on purpose to buy, but with privacy and caution, all the stock they could lay their hands on; till, by selling ten thousand pounds at four or five per cent. loss, he would buy a hundred thousand pounds stock at ten or twelve per cent. under price; and, in a few weeks, by just the contrary method, set them all buying, and then sell them their own stock again at ten or twelve per cent. profit.
These honest methods laid the foundation, we will not say of a fine great stone house, on a certain forest, but it certainly laid the foundation of an opulent family, and initiated the crowds of jobbers in that dexterity in tricking and cheating one another, which, to this day, they are the greatest proficients that this part of the world ever saw.
By this exactly-concerted intelligence, he then knew how to turn the wages (a sort of jobbing then in mode, and which grew so infamous that they were at length obliged to suppress it by Act of Parliament) which way he pleased, and by which he got an immense sum of money. How often did the gentleman run down true news as if it had been false, and run up false news as if it had been true, by the force of his foreign intelligencers! How often coin reports of great actions, to serve a turn! It is too late a trick to be forgot by many that were bit by it to the bone.
In a word, the putting false news upon us is nothing but an old trade revived,—though, it must be confessed, this of the Pretender has been a masterpiece,—and the worthy projector who has the credit of it must pass for a dexterous manager as any the university of Exchange Alley has bred up for thirty years past.
It had, also, one particular in it for which it was very remarkable. Sham reports, false news, foreign letters, &c., are things that have been often trumped upon us, as above; and the town have been, not long ago, cheated to a good round sum that way; but then they have been soon detected, the morning news has been set to rights in the afternoon, or the evening’s heat has cooled by morning. But this trick had a fatal duration, for it held us near a fortnight in a firm persuasion of the thing; and even then it continued but suspected only for some time longer, and was yet longer before it was fully detected; and even at last it was hardly conquered till the Jacobites laughed us out of it, and the Pretender was looked for nearer home.
The assurance with which it was carried about the several places from whence it was written, made it so effectually be swallowed down, that really people saw no room to question the truth of it for a great while. It was written from Rome, from Leghorn, from Genoa, from Turin, and from Paris. Nay, it was even believed at court, and almost everywhere else.
Exquisite fraud! Who could have believed that this had been born in Exchange Alley, sent over to Rome, agreed to there, and executed in such a manner as to cheat, not the town only, but all Europe!
The authority that every one found attended the report, supported it so that it possessed us all; even those whose concern for the fact extorted tears from them, were not undeceived. Thus the hucksters had time to play their game, and they made hay while the sun shone; for, if we may believe common fame, bargains, contracts, and agreements for stocks, bear-skins included, amounted in that time to some hundred thousands of pounds; nay, some say to two millions and better, most of which was to the loss of the believing party.
But what tricking, what fraud, what laying plots as deep as hell, and as far as the ends of the earth, is here! What cheating of fathers, and mothers, and brothers, gulling widows, orphans, cozening the most wary, and plundering the unwary! And how much meaner robberies than these bring the friendless even to the gallows every sessions!
But I must not stop here. The story of the Pretender is over; that trump is played; and the artful gamester is wanting a new trick, after having played so many already that one would think invention was at an end; yet they have found it out, and we are just let into the secret.