Part 37 (1/2)

”No, only clever ones. This is book-learning. It is the sort of wisdom you and I have outgrown these forty years. Why, at his age I was choke-full of maxims. They are good things to read; but act proverbs, and into the Gazette you go. My faith in any general position has melted away with the snow of my seventy winters.”

”What, then, if it was established that all adders bite, would you refuse to believe his adder would bite you, sir?”

”d.i.c.k, if a single adder bit me, it would go farther to convince me that the next adder would bite me too than if fifty young Buffons told me all adders bite.”

The senile youth was disconcerted for a single moment. He hesitated.

The keys that the old man had himself said would unlock his judgment lay beside him on the table. He could not help glancing slyly at them, but he would not use them before their turn. His mind was methodical.

His will was strong in all things. He put his hand in his side-pocket, and drew out a quant.i.ty of papers neatly arranged, tied, and indorsed.

The old men instantly bestowed a more watchful sort of attention on him.

”This, gentlemen, is a list of the joint-stock companies created last year. What do you suppose is their number?”

”Fifty, I'll be bound, Mr. Richard.”

”More than that, Skinner. Say eighty.”

”Two hundred and forty-three, gentlemen. Of these some were stillborn, but the majority hold the market. The capital proposed to be subscribed on the sum total is two hundred and forty-eight millions.”

”Pheugh! Skinner!”

”The amount actually paid at present (chiefly in bank-notes) is stated at 43,062,608 pounds, and the balance due at the end of the year on this set of ventures will be 204,937,392 pounds or thereabouts. The projects of _this year_ have not been collected, but they are on a similar scale. Full a third of the general sum total is destined to foreign countries, either in loans or to work mines, etc., the return for which is uncertain and future. All these must come to nothing, and ruin the shareholders that way, or else must sooner or later be paid in specie, since no foreign nation can use our paper, but must sell it to the Bank of England. We stand, then, pledged to burst like a bladder, or to _export_ in a few months thrice as much specie as we possess. To sum up, if the country could be sold to-morrow, with every brick that stands upon it, the proceeds would not meet the engagements into which these joint-stock companies have inveigled her in the course of twenty months. Viewed then, in gross, under the test, not of poetry and prospectus, but of arithmetic, the whole thing is a bubble.”

”A bubble?” uttered both the seniors in one breath, and almost in a scream.

”But I am ready to test it in detail. Let us take three main features--the share-market, the foreign loans, and the inflated circulation caused by the provincial banks. Why do the public run after shares? Is it in the exercise of a healthy judgment? No; a cunning bait has been laid for human weakness. Transferable shares valued at 100 pounds can be secured and paid for by small instalments of 5 pounds or less. If, then, his 100 pound shares rise to 130 pounds each, the adventurer can sell at a nominal profit of 30 per cent, but a real profit of 600 per cent on his actual investment. This intoxicates rich and poor alike. It enables the small capitalist to operate on the scale that belongs, in healthy times, to the large capitalist; a beggar can now gamble like a prince; his farthings are accepted as counters for sovereigns; but this is a distinct feature of all the more gigantic bubbles recorded. Here, too, you see, is illusory credit on a vast scale, with its sure consequence, inflated and fict.i.tious values; another bit of soap that goes to every bubble in history. Now for the Transatlantic loans. I submit them to a simple test. Judge nations like individuals. If you knew nothing of a man but that he had set up a new shop, would you lend him money? Then why lend money to new republics of whom you know nothing but that, born yesterday, they may die to-morrow, and that they are exhausted by recent wars, and that, where responsibility is divided, conscience is always subdivided?”

”Well said, Richard, well said.”

”If a stranger offered you thirty per cent, would you lend him your money?”

”No; for I should know he didn't mean to pay.”

”Well, these foreign negotiators offer nominally five per cent, but, looking at the price of the stock, thirty, forty, and even fifty per cent. Yet they are not so liberal as they appear; they could afford ninety per cent. You understand me, gentlemen. Would you lend to a man that came to you under an alias like a Newgate thief? Cast your eye over this prospectus. It is the Poyais loan. There is no such place as Poyais.”

”Good heavens!”

”It is a loan to an anonymous swamp by the Mosquito River. But Mosquito suggests a bite. So the vagabonds that brought the proposal over put their heads together as they crossed the Atlantic, and christened the place Poyais; and now fools that are not fools enough to lend sixpence to Zahara, are going to lend 200,000 pounds to rushes and reeds.”

”Why, Richard, what are you talking about? 'The air is soft and balmy; the climate fructifying; the soil is spontaneous'--what does that mean? mum! mum! 'The water runs over sands of gold.' Why, it is a description of Paradise. And, now I think of it, is not all this taken from John Milton?”

”Very likely. It is written by thieves.”

”It seems there are tortoise-sh.e.l.l, diamonds, pearls--”

”In the prospectus, but not in the mora.s.s. It is a good, straightforward mora.s.s, with no pretensions but to great damp. But don't be alarmed, gentlemen, our countrymen's money will not be swamped there. It will all be sponged up in Threadneedle Street by the poetic swindlers whose names, or aliases, you hold in your hand. The Greek, Mexican, and Brazilian loans may be translated from Prospectish into English thus: At a date when every sovereign will be worth five to us in sustaining shriveling paper and collapsing credit, we are going to chuck a million sovereigns into the h.e.l.lespont, five million sovereigns into the Gulf of Mexico, and two millions into the Pacific Ocean. Against the loans to the old monarchies there is only this objection, that they are unreasonable; will drain out gold when gold will be life-blood; which brings me, by connection, to my third item--the provincial circulation. Pray, gentlemen, do you remember the year 1793?”

For some minutes past a dead silence and a deep, absorbed attention had received the young man's words; but that quiet question was like a great stone descending suddenly on a silent stream. Such a noise, agitation, and flutter. The old banker and his clerk both began to speak at once.

”Don't we?”