Nothing is easier than to heap abuse upon the Stock Exchange and to place to its debit every crime of which the gambler can be guilty. And all the abuse would have a sediment of truth beneath it, for infinite are the evils that have grown up and spread their roots far and wide through all strata of modern society since the day when dealing in stocks and shares first became a passion or a habit. True as this is, and numberless as may be the demoralising consequences of indulgence in the habit of stock and share “bulling” and “bearing,” it would be none the less false and unjust to lay upon Stock Exchanges and their members all, or even half, the blame for the moral undermining of society that may ensue from subjection to the hazards of the play. In many of its functions the Stock Exchange has always done admirable service to civilised mankind, and the great majority of the members of all such institutions are men as upright, as humane and high-principled as could be found among any body of merchants in the world. It is not their fault but often their misfortune that the spirit of unbridled lust after unearned wealth should so continually strive for the mastery and so often become dominant in their business. From the point of view, however, of the highest ideal of national morality, it is unquestionable that the trade of the stockbroker is of tainted origin. In this country the business began in an organised sense when William III. founded the National Debt and called the Bank of England into existence to furnish him easily with the means to carry on his Continental wars; and an evil day surely it was for the peace of the world, for the progress of mankind and civilisation, for the masses of those who toiled in all countries endowed with a settled form of government, when national debts were invented—debts laid upon the shoulders of the people without either the intelligent or deliberate sanction of those called upon to bear the load, or adequate estimate of the consequences in any direction.