Lord Lanadovrne began by pointing out that there never was
a wilder or more discreditable Stock Exchange gamble than that which took place over the issue of the American Marconi shares. "There were inordinate gains and cruel and undeserved losses." It had been calculated that within two days the little knot of individuals who had particular means of knowing the inwardness of these transactions probably made a profit of something like a million and a half. (It must not be forgotten that the three Ministers, in effect, belonged to that little knot, or were, at any rate for a portion of their transactions, part of "a pool" whose gains and losses depended on the little knot.) The whole thing was so dis- reputable that the Committee of the Stock Exchange took the unusual course of suspending for five years some of the jobbers who were concerned in the introduction of the American Marconis to the market. Lord Lansdowne went on to criticize, but by no means in too drastic language, the conduct of the House of Commons Committee—a Committee two of whose members received secret information from a Minister whose conduct was under inquiry, and need that information in their examination of witnesses, but withheld it from the Committee as a whole.
