27 OCTOBER 1849, Page 18

FRANCIS'S CHRONICLES AND CHARACTERS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE.*

'THE Stock Exchange, with its bubbles, its frauds, its "speculations" as questionable transactions are softly called, its "characters," and some- times its crimes, would seem to furnish a more fitting subject for the gos- sipy genius of Mr. Francis than the "History of the Bank of England." Such, however, is not the case. The present book is inferior to its pre- decessor both in information and amusement. Various circumstances contribute to this inferiority. In the first place, the author forestalled his theme in his previous History. The South Sea Bubble, the super- ficial story of the most remarkable loans, (that is, the struggles, &c. of the subscribers to get their names down,) and the features of the great panics, were embraced in the account of the Bank, though often as pro- perly belonging to the Stock Exchange : hence, with regard to many re- markable money incidents he gives only a repetition with variations.

In the second place, the greater mass of the former subject, and its marked epochs, kept the writer in closer order so far as the Bank was concerned ; as the subject itself, especially at the time it appeared, had a weightier interest than belongs to the Stock Exchange now, or perhaps at any time. Some part of the inferior character of the Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange must be ascribed to the nature of the author's mind. Although little more than a bank and business gossip, he will handle recondite subjects of finance and political economy ; and, though his views may be right, they have a borrowed air, while the style in which they are presented is slight and superficial. Mr. Francis, more- over, is bitten by the Macaulay mania, without, we need scarcely say, possessing Macaulay's power or acquirements. Instead of the facts as he finds them, Mr. Francis aims at pictures of the state of society when frauds were going on and bubbles bursting; and, like his proto- type, takes the exception for the rule. The great defect of his mind, and from which many of the defects of his book arise, is a want of re- search and of acumen. He does not seem to have explored the great mass of materials that exist descriptive of the men and doings of the Stock Exchange ; and when be does look at them, he seems unable to form a true judgment, or to distinguish between the actual facts and the au- thor's colouring, exaggeration, or possibly invention. Hence some very strange stories are found in his book ; which, if they have any foundation in truth, are so distorted by their vulgar narrators in the telling that they look like falsehood to the reader.

The plan is undigested. The book begins with a cursory notice of the old system of English finance, when we had not a National Debt, at least one for the Stock Exchange. It gives an account of the tulip mania in Holland; and various stories of Parliamentary corruption, from the Revolution to the close of the last century, but so generalized, and when authority is cited apparently so exaggerated by Parliamentary or pamphleteering declamation, that the reader does not know what to make of it. In fine, the chronicles are more like a series of loosely- written articles got up for a magazine, than a studied and well-digested account of a very curious subject.

The anecdotes and biographical notices of brokers or persons in some way connected with the Stock Exchange are the best part of the book. This sketch of a man eminent in his day may Serve as a sample.

"Sampson Gideon, the great Jew broker as he was called in the City, and the founder of the house of Eardley as he is known to genealogists, died in 1762. This name, as the financial friend of Sir Robert Walpole, the oracle and leader of 'Change Alley, and the determined opponent of Sir John Barnard, was as familiar to City circles in the last century as the names of Goldsmid and Rothschild are to the present. A shrewd, sarcastic man, possessing a rich vein of humour, the anecdotes preserved of him are unhappily tew and far between. Never grant a life annuity to an old woman,' he would say; 'they wither, but they never die ': and if the proposed annuitant coughed with a violent asthmatic cough on ap- proaching the room-door, Gideon would call out, 'Ay, ay, you may cough, but it shan't save you six months' purchase!'

"in one of his dealings with Mr. Snow the hanker—immortalized by Dean Swift—the latter lent Gideon 20,000/. Shortly afterwards the 'forty-five' broke

• Chronicles and Characters of the stock Exchange. By John Francis, Author of 'the" History of the Bank of England, Its Times and Traditions." Fublished by Wil- b-*, and Co. out; the success of the Pretender seemed certain; and Mr. Snow, alarmed for his beloved property, addressed a piteous epistle to the Jew. A run upon his house, a stoppage, and a bankruptcy, were the least the banker's imagination pictured. and the whole concluded with an earnest request for his money. Gideon went t.,; the Bank, procured twenty notes, sent for a phial of hartahorn, rolled the phial in the notes, and thus grotesquely Mr. Snow received the money he had lent. "The greatest hit Gideon ever made was when the Rebel army approached London; when the King was trembling, when the Prime Minister was undeter. mined, and stocks were sold at any price. Unhesitatingly he went to Jonathan's, bought all in the market, advanced every guinea he possessed, pledged his name and reputation for more, and held as much as the remainder of the members held together. When the Pretender retreated and stocks rose, the Jew experienced the advantage of his foresight. " Like Guy, and most men whose minds are absorbed in one engrossing pur- suit, Mr. Gideon was no great regarder of the outward man. In a humorous essay cf the period, the author makes his hero say, Neither he nor yr. Sampson Gideon ever regarded dress.' He educated his children in the Christian faith, but said he was tee old himself to change. Being desirous to know the proficiency of his son in his new creed, he asked, Who made him ? ' and the buy replied, God.' He then asked, ' Who redeemed him?' to which the fitting response wa; given. Not knowing what else to say, he stammered out, 'Who—who—Who gave you that bat?' when the boy, with parrot-like precision, replied in the third person of the Trinity. This story was related with great unction at the period."