The next trick they tried, and which was, indeed, the masterpiece of their knavery, was the getting an assignment of the forfeited estates in Ireland into their hands. Indeed, they began the world upon this prospect, and expected to have had the whole kingdom of Ireland mortgaged to them. But here, too, they were disappointed, and had they not found a man that had as much money as themselves, and more honesty, that bargain of the forfeited estates had been the last they had made in the world. The endeavours they use to cheat that gentleman, after he had delivered them from a blow that would have blown them up, is another black part of their story that remains to be told, for the illustration of their character, at another time; but in the interim, ’t is enough to say, that he who delivered them as fools, knew how to deliver himself from them as knaves; and so they were dropped out of the Irish bargain, to their great mortification. Now they stand ready, as occasion offers, and profit presents, to stock-job the nation, cozen the Parliament, ruffle the Bank, run up and down stocks, and put the dice upon the whole town. They had another flap with a Fox-tail, to the scandal of their politics, in the late vote about the tickets of the lottery which I mentioned above. What market they will make of it is well enough known. But the plot was never the less cunning, and ’t is certain the knavery is not the less visible for the miscarriage. I come next to their more modern management. Whenever they call in their money, the stock-jobbers must sell; the bear-skin men must commute, and pay differences money; then down come the stocks, tumbling two or three per cent.; then the tools must sell and their masters buy; the next week they take in stocks again, then the jobbers buy, and the managers sell. Thus the jobbers bite their friends, and these men bite the jobbers, _qui sarpat sharpabitur_,—Exchange Alley Latin: they that are let into the secret will understand it. The truth is, it has been foretold by cunning men, who often see what can’t be hid, that these men, by a mass of money which they command of other people’s, as well as their own, will, in time, ruin the jobbing trade. But ’t will be only like a general visitation, where all distempers are swallowed up in the plague, like a common calamity, that makes enemies turn friends, and drowns lesser grievance in the general deluge. For if the reprisal trade should adjourn from Exchange Alley to Birchin Lane, it may seem to be like the banishing usury from the city of Rome, which transferred it to a Jew at Genoa, a monk at Naples, and a banker at Venice, who, it was said, had no less than seven-and-twenty principalities in Italy mortgaged to them at a time, besides two kingdoms, seven duchies, and the jewels of the crown of France.