Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_ _The whole of this Work is contained in the Bankers’ Magazine for 1850._ CHRONICLES AND CHARACTERS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE. BY JOHN FRANCIS. AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND, ITS TIMES AND TRADITIONS. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. TO WHICH ARE ADDED STOCK TABLES FROM 1732 TO 1846; DIVIDENDS ON BANK OF ENGLAND STOCK FROM 1694 TO 1847, &c. BOSTON: WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS, 111 WASHINGTON STREET. 1850. INSCRIBED, BY PERMISSION, TO SAMUEL GURNEY, ESQ. THIS VOLUME, RECORDING CITY SCENES, AND RELATING TO CITY TRANSACTIONS, IS, TO SAMUEL GURNEY, ONE OF LONDON’S MOST EMINENT CITIZENS, RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY HIS MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT, JOHN FRANCIS. PREFACE. To gather the many remarkable incidents connected with the National Debt; to present an anecdotical sketch of the causes which necessitated, and the corruptions which increased it; to reproduce its principal characters; to detail the many evils of lotteries; to relate the difficulties in the early history of railways; to popularize those loans, of which the Poyais, with its melancholy tragedy, and the Greek, with its whimsical transactions, were such striking exemplars; and to group these subjects around the Stock Exchange, is the object of a portion of the present volume. Any work which tends to familiarize the origin and progress of the National Debt, which shows that it was raised for no idle cause, and increased for no trifling purpose, may be useful in the consideration of that encumbrance which must, sooner or later, be reduced or repudiated. The volume does not profess to be statistical,—there are abundant works of a financial kind upon the subject. Mr. Van Sommer’s valuable Tables, to which the writer acknowledges his obligations, and which, with Mr. Wilkinson’s Law of the Public Funds, should be possessed by every member of the Stock Exchange; the works of McCulloch, of Hamilton, of Grellier, of Fenn, render such a production unnecessary. The present volume is a popular narrative of the money power of England, intended to be at once interesting and suggestive. _Shooter’s Hill._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE _Ancient Mode of supporting Governments.—Ignorance of Political Economy.—Mercantile Greatness.—Early Supplies.—Tulip Mania.—Accession of William._ 1 CHAPTER II. _The Earliest National Debt.—History of Tontines.—Of the Money Interest, its Origin, Extravagance, and Folly.—Royal Exchange.—First Irredeemable Debt.—Tricks of the Brokers.—Jobbing in East India Stock.—False Reports.—Importance of the English Funds.—Picture of the Alley.—Systematic Jobbing of Sir Henry Furnese, Medina, and Marlborough.—Thomas Guy, a Dealer in the Alley._ 6 CHAPTER III.