Chronicles and characters of the stock exchangeFrancis, John, of the Bank of England
History
Chronicles and characters of the stock exchange
Francis, John, of the Bank of England
Speculation; Stock Exchange (London, England)
C——, a man of brass sufficient for much more business than he can
be trusted with, is said to manage for three blue ribbons, and for
four or five cash-keepers, who tell more money than their own. He
fetches and carries with such indefatigable application, that he
is said never to fail his appointments to a minute, however remote
from one another. Wherever he appears, he makes an Exchange Alley in
his person, and a court in his audience; he is himself a Jonathan’s
coffee-house in little; though he be at a cockpit, he realizes
Exchange Alley in every place, and yet he rather is directed than
directs; and, like a certain great general, famed for more fire than
phlegm, is fitter to drive than to lead.
S—— has twice the head, but not half the business as C—— is said to
have, yet he gets more money for himself, and C—— gets more for other
folks. S—— is as cunning as C—— is bold, and the reserve of one with
the openness of the other, makes a complete Exchange Alley man. C——
jumps at every thing, and as he got the start of the world at his
beginning, by venturing more than he was worth, so he deals now with
all men as if they ventured more than they are worth. Originally he
was a bite, which, in modern language, is a sharper; or, being fully
interpreted, may signify the head-class of the fraternity called
pickpockets.
T——, a gamester of the same board, acts in concert with C—— and S——,
and makes together a true triumvirate of modern thieving. He inherits
the face of C——, with the craft of S——, but seems to take state upon
him, and acts the reserved part more than either; yet even this, too,
is all grimace, for wherever he can be sure to kill, he can’t fawn
like an Irishman.
They are all three of yesterday in their characters, yet they are old
in their crime, viz., of resolving to be rich at the price of every
man they can bubble. Their first blow was aimed at the Bank, but
there they were outwitted; and the great Lord Treasurer Godolphin, in
the late reign, gave them their just characters from that action. The
defeat they met with there sticks so close to them, that they reserve
the measures of their revenge, not to cool, no, not till the charter
of the Bank shall expire.
However, their wings being clipped by the clause then obtained in an
Act of Parliament,—that no society, corporation, &c., should issue
out bills of credit as a bank, but the Bank of England only,—they
were obliged ever since to turn stock-jobbers, or, if we may speak
properly of them, they are the stock-jobbers’ masters; for they have
so many bear-skins pawned to them at a time, so much stock deposited
with them upon bottomrée, as it might be called, that indeed they may
be called the city pawnbrokers; and I have been told, that they have
had fifty stock-jobbers and brokers bound hand and foot, and laid in
heaps at their doors at a time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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