It was very remarkable, that, in the juncture of those things, the Jacobites could not refrain taking notice how easy it was to set the citizens plundering the Bank, and even the Exchequer, too; for, had this gone on, the funds, which are, in effect, the Exchequer itself, would have gone down hill hand in hand with the Bank; credit would have borne equal pace in one as well as in the other; and the government would no more have been able to borrow, than the Bank would have been able to pay. It is scarce fit to enter into a description of all the mischievous consequences which necessarily follow running down the public credit, in case of such dangers as I have mentioned above. If I should fully describe them, it would appear incredible. Every one will allow that this practice of the jobbers, carried on a little farther, would indeed appear to be the worst kind of treason. But it is needful, after having said thus much of the crime, to say something of the place, and then a little of the persons, too. The centre of the jobbing is in the kingdom of Exchange Alley, and its adjacencies. The limits are easily surrounded in about a minute and a half, viz., stepping out of Jonathan’s into the Alley, you turn your face full south; moving on a few paces, and then turning due east, you advance to Garraway’s; from thence, going out at the other door, you go on still east into Birchin Lane; and then halting a little at the Sword-blade Bank, to do much mischief in fewest words, you immediately face to the north, enter Cornhill, visit two or three petty provinces there in your way west, and thus having boxed your compass, and sailed round the whole stock-jobbing globe, you turn into Jonathan’s again; and so, as most of the great follies of life oblige us to do, you end just where you began. But this is by way of digression; and even still, before I come to the main case, I am obliged to tell you that, though this is the sphere of the jobbers’ motion, the orb to which they are confined, and out of which they cannot well act in their way, yet it does not follow but that men of foreign situation (I mean foreign as to them, I do not mean foreign as to nation); nay, some whose lustre is said to be too bright for the hemisphere of a coffee-house, have yet their influence there, and act by substitutes and representatives. But first I must speak to originals.