LORD HARDW1CKE AND THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Permit me to impart to you the substance of a family legend. My grandfather was a City man, a Member of Parliament, and an adherent of the Grenville party. On matters connected with "the City" the politician was in the habit of consulting the City man in question. On one occasion, when the subject of conversation was the possibility of realising large profits from early information, Lord Grenville asked my grandfather whether he thought all the stories told of these large profits were founded on fact. My grandfather answered that he was not a stockjobber, still less a political authority, but that he could easily test the matter if Lord Grenville wished it. His Lordship then said : "I will give you the earliest information obtainable in the position I hold as Prime Minister, and you shall try your fortune and mine in dealing on the Stock Exchange." At the end of a year the statesman and merchant met again to study the account after the earliest information given by the Prime Minister to the City man had been acted on. My grandfather rendered the account, and showed that, had the information led to transactions on a large scale, all parties connected with them would have been utterly ruined. When the battle of Waterloo was fought, it was not the Government which told the news to Rothschild, but Rothschild who told it to the Government. In my own experience I have known the man with the most brilliant prospects granted to any one utterly disgraced and ruined by 9.ttempting to deal in the manner suggested. His own description of what occurred will suffice. He had not a minute's peace all the morning till the evening paper came in with the news obtained by its editor, not by the speculator's exclusive infotmation. But the truth is, a man's mind occupied with stock gambling could not, if he would, bury itself in details of administration, in finance, or in high politics ; nor would a man pulling at what the "man in the street" calls "red-tape" be likely to make his fortune in
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