Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849
Various
Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849
THE NATIONAL DEBT AND THE STOCK EXCHANGE.[1 - A Financial, Monetary, and Statistical History of England, from the Revolution of 1688 to the present time. By Thomas Doubleday, Esq. London: 1847.Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange. By John Francis, Esq. London: 1849.]
The idea of associating history with some specific locality or institution, has long ago occurred to the skilful fabricators of romance. If old walls could speak, what strange secrets might they not reveal! The thought suggests itself spontaneously even to the mind of the boy; and though it is incapable of realisation, writers – good, bad, and indifferent – have seriously applied themselves to the task of extracting sermons from the stones, and have feigned to reproduce an audible voice from the vaults of the dreary ruin. Such was at least the primary idea of Scott, incomparably the greatest master of modern fiction, whilst preparing his materials for the construction of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. Victor Hugo has made the Cathedral of Paris the title and centre-point of his most stirring and animated tale. Harrison Ainsworth, who seems to think that the world can never have too much of a good thing, has assumed the office of historiographer of antiquity, and has treated us in succession to Chronicles of Windsor Castle, the Tower, and Old St Paul's. Those of the Bastile have lately been written by an author of no common power, whose modesty, rarely imitated in these days, has left us ignorant of his name; and we believe that it would be possible to augment the list to a considerable extent. In all those works, however, history was the subsidiary, while romance was the principal ingredient; we have now to deal with a book which professes to abstain from romance, though, in reality, no romance whatever has yet been constructed from materials of deeper interest. We allude, of course, to the work of Mr Francis; Mr Doubleday's treatise is of a graver and a sterner nature.
We dare say, that no inconsiderable portion of those who derive their literary nutriment from Maga, may be at a loss to understand what element of romance can lie in the history of the Stock Exchange. With all our boasted education, we are, in so far as money-matters are concerned, a singularly ignorant people. That which ought to be the study of every citizen, which must be the study of every politician, and without a competent knowledge of which the exercise of the electoral franchise is a blind vote given in the dark, is as unintelligible as the Talmud to many persons of more than ordinary accomplishment and refinement. The learned expounder of Thucydides would be sorely puzzled, if called upon to give an explanation of the present funding system of Great Britain. The man in easy circumstances, who draws his dividend at the Bank, knows little more about the funds than that they mysteriously yield him a certain return for capital previously invested, and that the interest he receives comes, in some shape or other, from the general pocket of the nation. He is aware that consols oscillate, but he does not very well understand why, though he attributes their rise or fall to foreign news. It never occurs to him to inquire for what reason that which yields a certain return, is yet liable to such surprising and violent fluctuations; he shakes his head in despair at the mention of foreign exchanges, and is not ashamed to avow his incapacity to grapple with the recondite question of the currency. And yet it may not only be safely, but it ought to be most broadly averred, that without a due comprehension of the monetary system of this country, and the general commercial principles which regulate the affairs of the world, history is nothing more than a tissue of barren facts and perpetual contradictions, which it is profitless to contemplate, and utterly impossible to reconcile. Nay more, all history which is written by authors, who have