Stocks are the "heaven of this religion," an agreeable hallucination, by which a variety of insane persons, called Stockholders or Fundholders, are permitted to roam at large under the conviction that they possess wealth. The public are compelled to believe in these fictitious representations, which are the foundation of the "imaginative system" in fiscal affairs, of the Bill and Credit system in commerce, and of the National Debt.
In England there is nothing truly national but this debt, or dead weight, which is the mighty pendulum which makes the national clock "go upon tick." It is the true foundation of political economy and of social faith or trust; "'pon tick" is the basis of the wealth and happiness of our country, which it makes the envy of the world and the glory of surrounding nations.
To be in debt argues credit, and credit respectability, and respectability means, and means resolve themselves into the Funds; here they merge into the blessed obscurity of "nothingness," and being absorbed by the same media, pass for a "something" which is far more formidable than "anything." Thus private wealth moves in a circle continually, making the round O from 0 (nothing) to 0 (nothing.)
Joint Stock.—Joint Stock Companies are so called from the projectors being generally "black legs," and their victims "raw Jemmies." The object of such companies is to give honesty the "cross buttock," to have a "shind eye" with capital, and to end in an "offal" bankruptcy.
From a consideration of the immediately preceding rules, and assuming as a fact the spiritual and ethereal nature of stock or capital, it is therefore proposed to found a Joint-Stock Company of unlimited capital, to be called the Boreal Pneumatic Joint-Stock Company, for "raising the wind," and making "darkness visible," or the National "Puff" Company.
Raising the wind has been the great problem of all financial operations. It is of far more importance than "raising the dead." The "wind" is a conventional term for the "needful." It is called wind because it is raised by various "Puffs."
There are various kinds of Puff; the Puff National, the Puff Medical, the Puff Legal, the Puff Literary, the "Puff Theatrical," and the Puff Scholastic.
THE PUFF NATIONAL—A ROYAL SPEECH.
My Lords and Gentlemen,—The flourishing state of my empire having filled me with the most intense satisfaction, I have called you together to inform you that we are the envy of the world and glory of surrounding nations, and that everything is so plentiful that pigs run about the streets ready roasted, with carving knives and forks stuck in their backs, crying, "Eat me, eat me!"