The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-05-26


 prudent man could invest his money. The old man had retired many years before with twenty thousand pounds, in 0 strong box; and he had been spend- ing his hoard while deriving no profit from it for years, because he could not get an income from his money and at the same time have it available, Mon ey had been scarce, and no large amount of it had been seeking invest ment. A little while before the death of MT. Pope the income of an eminent merchant was quoted at 400 pounds per annum; and that of another, not quite so distinguished, was estimated at POO pounds. True, good deal was locked up in the strong boxes of the gold smiths, on which sort of check could be drawn, but living on the income of personal property was then practically unknown. The necessity, however, had now arisen. A great deal of money had accumulated in the money chests; and the little government loan, which was soon increased, was a small channel through which to empty the strong boxes of England into the current of remunerative investment Many gov ernment loans followed this, In quick succession, and were eagerly taken. And then came a period of speculation such as never had been known before. "'
 Mir Townsend then reviewed at length the history of the Holland tulip
 mania; of the English bubble days, and the John Law case in France, in the first half of the eighteenth century,
 pointing out that most of the so-called companies in England were illegal, and
 that they issued no tangible securities of any kind, for, In ITO, Lord Mansfield
 said of stock ertificates: Tt is new
 species of property, arisen within the compass of a few years"
 The history of English consols was
 thus given: originally, some one had
 loaned the government a hundred pounds, and the government had caused
 his name to be enrolled on it's books as a creditor from whom it had received
 that amount, and to whom, some day,
 1t might, if it chose, repay it. It need
 never do so; but until it did it must pay
 him an annuity of three pounds. That is, he received three per cent. on his
 money as long as the government chose
 to keep it; but the government could
 pay it back at any time it chose to do so. This creditor, then, owned a con-
 sol. That is, he owned such debt
 from the government as I have just de-
 scribed If he wished to transfer what
 rights he had-that is, his three per cent. per annum-and the right to his
 one hundred pounds when, if ever, the
 government chose to return it. he could
 go to the Bank of England with his transferee and receive the purchase
 price from him and the stock would be placed on the government book in the place of the former owner; and there- after the transferee would receive the three pounds a year, and the hundred | pounds if it was ever paid back. But no paper passed the receipt for the pur- chase money which was given by the seller to the buyer, and which the bank | official checked with red mark. These | receipts were not certificates of owner | ship, and were seldom preserved; never 1 except for purposes of Identification when the new owner went to draw his first dividend. After that they were destroyed. It is true that in old times, l the owner of a consol was given tally; which was nothing but block of wood with notches on it, split in two so that a portion of each notch should be on each half; and the government kept one-half and the owner of the stock the | other half. These showed the state of | the account between the government and | it's creditor; but this was an anticipated | system of keeping accounts, brought Ina 1ay rbap yr;ti l little known; and at last they were | abolished by act of parliament and 1 burned. There were so many of them | that when they were thrown into the | furnaces these became superheated, and | the parliament houses burned down. Which, perhaps, served the authorities | right for keeping up the anticipated | system so long.
 Tn reading the history of these old | days we realize the truth of the saying l that there Is nothing new except that which has been forgotten. Although | they had no such paper representatives | of their interests and choses in action
 as we have now, we find they had many | of the customs, practices and expedients I which we are accustomed to think are
 the outgrowth of present financial con- | dltions. They had their long and short | sales, and did all they could to sup press them; and we read of them, | Moreover, great numbers of contracts were made for taking many of them l at future time, and also for puts and | refusals of them, at very high prices | We find one authority of the time say | ing that the sale of stock for future | delivery, when you do not have the stock, is nothing else than a wager
 So true in many cases, but now ingen- 1 iously avoided by the courts. They | rigged the market by false rumors; as | in the case of the report of Queen Anne's death They had their enis- saries on the battlefield to bring back | the latest news by couriers, for stock | jobbing purposes. And it is said that | the wealthy Hebrew, Medina, who ac- companied Marlborough in all his cam | paigns, administered to the avarice of
 the great captain by an annuity of six | thousand pounds per annum.' and re- I paid himself by expresses containing
 intelligence of these great battles which | fire the English blood to hear them
 named And Families, Oudenard and 1 Blenheim administered as much to the purse of the Hebrew as they did to the glory of England. And wise coun- selor, in the last century, says: "The | jobbing brokers and their principals,
 the whole body of jobbers, must live;