Chronicles and characters of the stock exchange

by of the Bank of England John Francis

Again, are there fewer sharpers and setters in Exchange Alley than at the Groom Porters? Is there less cheating in stock-jobbing than at play? Or, rather, is there not fifty times more? An unentered youth coming to deal in Exchange Alley is immediately surrounded with bites, setters, pointers, and the worst set of cheats, just as a young country gentleman is with bawds, pimps, and spongers, when he first comes to town. It is ten thousand to one, when a forward young tradesman steps out of his shop into Exchange Alley, I say ’t is ten thousand to one but he is undone: if you see him once but enter the fatal door, never discount his bills afterwards, never trust him with goods at six months’ pay any more.

If it be thus dangerous to the mean, what is it to the great? I see only this difference, that in the first the danger is private, in the latter public.

It has not been many years since elections for members of —— came to market in Exchange Alley, as current as lottery-tickets now, and at a price, like these, much above what any Parliament allowed them to go at. While this was carried on, a great many honest men exclaimed against it, and exposed it; nay, several Acts of Parliament were proposed for regulating elections, and preventing bribery and corruption; but all this would not do, and this, indeed, was one of the happy consequences of that otherwise necessary act for triennial Parliaments; and I firmly believe, that it is owing very much to the late suspending that act for a time, that these things are not come to market again.

It may easily be remembered, that the first occasion of the Exchange Alley men engaging in the case of elections of members was in King William’s time, on the famous disputes which happened between the Old East India Company and the New; which, having held a great while, and having embarrassed, not the city only, but the whole nation, and even made itself dangerous to the public business, it was expected it should be fully decided by the House of Commons. To this end, the members of both companies, with all the trick, artifice, cunning, and corruption, that money and interest could arm them with, bestirred themselves to be chosen members.

Brokers rid night and day from one end of the kingdom to the other, to engage gentlemen to bribe corporations, to buy off competitors, and to manage the elections. You will see the state of things at that time, and the danger this stock-jobbing wickedness had brought the public to, if you please to read the following exclamation of the honest freeholders at that time, which was presented to the public by way of complaint. The thing was laid before the king first, and before the Parliament afterwards; and it was his Majesty’s sense of the consequence, that made him resolve to bring the two East India Companies to unite their stocks; for, in a word, the stock-jobbers embroiled the whole nation.

There was a book published some years ago, and when the stock-jobbing people were thought as willing, yet not quite so daring or so cunning, as they are now; it was entitled, “The Villany of the Stock-jobbers.” Indeed, it set them out in their true colors, and for some time gave them a little shock; for the truth was, they jobbed King William and the government at that time at such a rate, that, in spite of the invincible valor and resolution of the soldiery, in spite of the most glorious prince and most vigilant general the world had ever seen, yet the enemy gained upon us every year; the funds were run down, the credit jobbed away in Exchange Alley, the king and his troops devoured by mechanics, and sold to usury; tallies lay bundled up like Bath faggots in the hands of brokers and stock-jobbers; the Parliament gave taxes, laid funds, but the loans were at the mercy of those men; and they showed their mercy, indeed, by devouring the king and the army, the Parliament, and, indeed, the whole nation, bringing that great prince sometimes to that exigence, through unexpressible extortions that were put upon him, that he has even gone into the field without his equipage, nay, even without his army; the regiments have been unclothed when the king has been in the field, and the willing, brave English spirit, eager to honor their country, and follow such a king, have marched even to battle without either stockings or shoes, while his servants have been every day working in Exchange Alley, to get his own money of the Stock-jobbers, even after all the horrible demands of discount have been allowed; and, at last, scarce fifty per cent. of the money granted by Parliament has come into the Exchequer, and that late, too late for that service, and by driblets, till the king has been tired of the delay, and been even ready to give up the cause.

We have just now had a test of their cunning on the subject of the invasion. These were the men that made the first advantage of the news; immediately those that were to put stock upon any man at a high price tendered it, the accepters, forced by the demand, call in their money on their hand, pay the difference, the price falls, a general run upon the Bank follows, and stock-jobbing began it.

Say this was no design, yet if every alarm of the foolish, or the timorous, or the false, is capable to set the humor afloat by the agency of Exchange Alley, is as dangerous to the public safety as a magazine of gunpowder is to a populous city.

But if it be by design, then, whenever the Pretender is to be pawned upon us by any foreign power that can but talk of lending five or six thousand men, our public credit is at his mercy, by the agency of Exchange Alley and the brokers.

The story of the invasion from Spain, we hope, is now over. Indeed, at the worst, I saw no such reason to be surprised to that degree as was the case here. Let us look back, and see what injury to the public has the very rumor been! what damage to credit! what stop to trade! what interruption to our general commerce! besides sinking above a million sterling upon our estates; and every farthing of this is occasioned by the stock-jobbers, and in the consequence of their contrivance, and by no other means; for as to the design of an invasion, or that they resolved to come hither at all, though we have evident proofs of that, because some of them have been actually landed, yet we cannot yet resolve the question positively, whether it was ever worth our being so much alarmed, as we have been in Exchange Alley.