It is astonishing what faith people put in printed certificates, got up in a style which resembles documents of real value. A sheet of thin paper resembling that of a bank note, with a large impressed stamp of a corporation upon it, and filled in with the magic word sterling, is, as a rule, sufficient dust thrown in the eyes of the general public to send them home satisfied to make no further inquiries until collapse reveals the sham that has been prepared for them. Ordinary people go to market and make an elaborate fuss over a joint of meat before paying their money, seeing that it is to a Shylockian nicety of weight, but when they invest a hundred pounds in a mine, there have been cases in which they hardly knew where the property was,—or even if it existed at all. It is very wonderful that such an incomprehensible degree of confidence is placed in concoctors of companies, and it is the knowledge that the general public is so ludicrously gullible that encourages the formation of joint-stock concerns upon often the most flimsy bases. CHAPTER XII. THE SHIFTING OF SPECULATION FROM THE HIGHER TO THE LOWER CLASSES OF SECURITIES. [Sidenote: SPECULATION IN CONSOLS AS A HEDGE.] Compared with what there used to be in bygone years there is now next to no speculation in Consols at all. Merchants and bankers once upon a time used to speculate in the Funds[43] as a hedge. But things have changed, and such a method of providing against a mercantile loss, which might be brought about by the same cause that would depress Consols, has gone out of fashion, doubtless owing in some degree to there being other modes of protecting themselves against risks which both merchants and bankers must for all time incur. The maxim which is adopted by all prudent speculators in the markets, by which we mean the dealers in the Stock Exchange, who in the nature of their business must to some extent speculate, or they would lose business, is to sell when things are dear, and buy when they are cheap, and pay no attention at all to reports. Men who have had years of experience, know how to estimate at their just value the _on dits_ that are for ever floating about their ears. Right or wrong, there is no money in them in the long run, and it is with the long run that operators should have to do. [Sidenote: SPECULATION HAS CHANGED ITS VENUE.] [Sidenote: INCREASE OF THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE STATES OF THE WORLD.] [Sidenote: THE FLUCTUATIONS IN THE PRICE OF GOVERNMENT STOCKS.]