Part 39 (2/2)

Not only was wild speculation, hitherto so universal and ardent, snuffed out like a candle, but investment ceased and commerce came to a stand-still. Bank stock, East India stock, and, some days, consols themselves, did not go down; they went out, were blotted from the book of business. No man would give them gratis; no man would take them on any other terms. The brokers closed their books; there were no buyers nor sellers. Trade was coming to the same pa.s.s, except the retail business in eatables; and an observant statesman and economist, that watched the phenomenon, p.r.o.nounced that in forty-eight hours more all dealings would have ceased between man and man, or returned to the rude and primitive form of barter, or direct exchange of men's several commodities, labor included.

Finally, things crept into their places; shades of distinction were drawn between good securities and bad. Shares were forfeited, companies dissolved, bladders punctured, balloons flattened, bubbles burst, and thousands of families ruined--thousands of people beggared--and the nation itself, its paper fever reduced by a severe bleeding, lay sick, panting, exhausted, and discouraged for a year or two to await the eternal cycle--torpor, prudence, health, plethora, blood-letting; torpor, prudence, health, plethora, bloodletting, etc., etc., etc., etc., _in secula seculorum._

The journals pitched into ”speculation.”

Three banks lay in the dust in the town of ----, and Hardie & Son stood looking calmly down upon the ruins.

Richard Hardie had carried out his double-headed plan.

There was no run upon him--could not be one in the course of nature, his balances were so low, and his notes were all at home. He created artificially a run of a very different kind. He dined the same party of tradesmen--all but one, who could not come, being at supper after Polonius his fas.h.i.+on. After dinner he showed the packets still sealed, and six more unsealed. ”Here, gentlemen, is our whole issue.” There was a huge wood fire in the old-fas.h.i.+oned room. He threw a packet of notes into it. A most respectable grocer yelled and lost color: victim of his senses, he thought sacred money was here destroyed, and his host a well-bred, and oh! how plausible, maniac. The others derided him, and packet after packet fed the flames. When two only were left, containing about five thousand pounds between them, Hardie junior made a proposal that they should advertise in their shop windows to receive Hardie's five-pound notes as five guineas in payment for their goods.

Observing a natural hesitation, he explained that they would by this means, crush their compet.i.tors, and could easily clap a price on their goods to cover the odd s.h.i.+llings. The bargain was soon struck. Mr.

Richard was a great man. All his guests felt in their secret souls and pockets--excuse the tautology--that some day or other they should want to borrow money of him. Besides, ”crush their compet.i.tors!”

Next day Mr. Richard loosed his hand and let a flock of his own bank-notes fly (they were asked for earnestly every day). Some soon found their way to the shops in question. The next day still more took wing and buzzed about the shops. Presently other tradesmen, finding people rushed to the shops in question, began to bid against them for Hardie's notes, a result the long-headed youth had expected; and said notes went up to ten s.h.i.+llings premium. Too calm and cold to be betrayed into deserting his principles, he confined the issue within the bounds he had prescribed, and when they were all out seldom saw one of them again. By this means he actually lowered the Bank of England notes in public estimation, and set his own high above them in the town of ----. Deposits came in. Confidence unparalleled took the place of fear so far as he was concerned, and he was left free to work the other part of his plan.

To the amazement and mystification of old Skinner, he laid out ten thousand pounds in Exchequer bills, and followed this up by other large purchases of paper, paper, nothing but paper.

Hardie senior was nervous.

”Are you true to your own theory, Richard?”

The youth explained to him that blind confidence always ends in blind distrust, and then all paper becomes depreciated alike, but good paper is sure to recover. ”Sixty-two s.h.i.+llings discount, sir, is a ridiculous decline of Exchequer bills. We are at peace, and elastic, and the government is strong. My other purchases all rest upon certain information, carefully and laboriously ama.s.sed while the world was so busy blowing bubbles. I am now buying paper that is unjustly depreciated in Panic, i.e., in the second act of that mania of which Bubble is the first act.” He added: ”When the herd buy, the price rises; when they sell, it falls. To buy with them and sell with them is therefore to buy dear and sell cheap. My game--and it is a game that reduces speculation to a certainty--is threefold:

”First, never, at any price or under any temptation, buy anything that is not as good as gold.

”Secondly, buy that sound article when the herd sells it.

”Thirdly, sell it when the herd buys it.”

”Richard,” said the old man, ”I see what it is--you are a genius.”

”No.”

”It is no use your denying it, Richard.”

”Common sense, sir, common sense.”

”Yes, but common sense carried to such a height as you do is genius.”

”Well, sir, then I own to the genius of common sense.”

”I admire you, Richard--I am proud of you; but the bank has stood one hundred and forty years, and never a genius in it;” the old man sighed.

Hardie senior, having relieved his mind of this vague misgiving, never returned to it--probably never felt it again. It was one of those strange flashes that cross a mind as a meteor the sky.

The old gentleman, having little to do, talked more than heretofore, and, like fathers, talked about his son, and, unlike sons, cried him up at his own expense. The world is not very incredulous; above all, it never disbelieves a man who calls himself a fool. Having then gained the public ear by the artifice of self-depreciation, he poured into it the praises of Hardie junior. He went about telling how he, an old man, was all but bubbled till this young Daniel came down and foretold all. Thus paternal garrulity combined for once with a man's own ability to place Richard Hardie on the pinnacle of provincial grandeur.

A few years more and Hardie senior died. (His old clerk, Skinner, followed him a month later.)

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