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Saturday, people began to be alarmed, and, as Mr Francis describes the situation, "Money was scarce, the price of stock and scrip lowered; the confidence of the people was broken, and a vision of a dark future on every face. Advertisements were suddenly withdrawn from the papers; names of note were seen no more as provisional committee men; distrust followed the merchant to the mart, and the jobber to the Exchange. The new schemes ceased to be regarded; applications ceased to be forwarded; premiums were either lowered, or ceased to exist. Bankers looked anxiously to the accounts of their customers; bill brokers scrutinised their securities; and every man was suspicious of his neighbour.

"But the distrust was not confined to projected lines. Established Railways felt the shock, and were reduced in value. Consols fell one and a half per cent.; Exchequer Bills declined in price, and other markets sympathised. The people had awoke from their dream, and trembled. It was a national alarm.

"Words are weak to express the fears and feelings which prevailed. There was no village too remote to escape the shock, and there was, probably, no house in town, some occupant of which did not shrink from the morrow. The Statesman started to find his new Bank Charter so sadly, and so suddenly tried the peer, who had so thoughtlessly invested, saw ruin opening to his view. Men hurried with bated breath to their brokers; the allottee was uneasy and suspicious: the provisional committee man grew pale at his fearful responsibility: directors ceased to boast their blushing honours, and promoters saw their expected profits evaporate. Shares, which, the previous week, were a fortune, were, the next, a fatality to their owners. The reputed shareholders were not found when they were wanted: provisional committee men were not more easy of access.

"One Railway advertised the names and addresses of thirty -none of whom were to be heard of at the residences

ascribed to them.

day after day.

Letters were returned to the Post Office, Nor is this to be wondered at, when it is said that, on one projected line, only £60 was received for deposits which should have yielded £700,000.

"It was proved in the Committee of the House of Commons, that one subscription list was formed of 'lame ducks of the Alley'; and that, in another, several of the Directors, including the Chairman, had, also, altered their several subscriptions to the amount of £100,000, the very evening on which the list was deposited, and that five shillings a man was given to any one who would sign for a certain number of shares.

"Nothing more decidedly marked the crisis which had arrived, than the fact that every one hastened to disown railways. Gentlemen who had been buried in prospectuses, whose names and descriptions had been published under every variation that could fascinate the public, who had figured as committee men, and received the precious guineas for their attendance, were eager to assure the world that they were ignorant of this great transgression. Men, who, a month before, had boasted of the large sums they had made by scrip, sent advertisements to papers denying their responsibility, or appealed to the Lord Mayor to protect their .characters. Members of Parliament who had remained quiet under the infliction, while it was somewhat respectable, fell back upon their privileges when they saw their purses in danger. There is no doubt that an unauthorised use of names was one feature of fraudulent Companies, and that, amid a list of common names, it was thought a distinguished one might pass unnoticed. The complaints, therefore, of those who were thus unceremoniously treated were just; but the great mass of denials emanated from persons who, knowingly, encountered the risk, and meanly shrunk from the danger.

"It is the conviction of those who are best informed that no other panic was ever so fatal to the middle class. It reached every hearth, it saddened every heart in the

metropolis. Entire families were ruined.

There

was

scarcely an important town in England, but what beheld some wretched suicide. Daughters, delicately nurtured, went out to seek their bread; sons were recalled from academies; households were separated : homes were desecrated by the emissaries of the law. There was a disruption of every social tie. The debtor's jails were peopled with promoters; Whitecross Street was filled with speculators; and the Queen's bench was full to overflowing. Men who had lived comfortably and independently, found themselves suddenly responsible for sums they had no means of paying. In some cases they yielded their all, and began the world anew; in others, they left the country for the continent, laughed at their creditors, and defied pursuit. One gentleman was served with four hundred writs a peer, similarly pressed, when offered to be relieved from all liabilities for £15,000, betook himself to his yacht, and forgot, in the beauties of the Mediterranean, the difficulties which had surrounded him. Another gentleman, who, having nothing to lose, surrendered himself to his creditors, was a director of more than twenty lines. A third was Provisional Committee man to fifteen. A fourth, who commenced life as a printer, who became an insolvent in 1832, and a bankrupt in 1837, who had negotiated partnerships, who had arranged embarrassed affairs, who had collected debts, and turned his attention to anything, did not disdain, also, to be a railway promoter, a railway director, or to spell his name in a dozen different ways."

But a notice of the Railway Mania would be very incomplete without mention of George Hudson, the Railway King. He was born at Howsham, a village near York, in March 1800, was apprenticed to a draper in York, and subsequently became principal in the business; thus, early in life, becoming well off, besides having £30,000 left him by a distant relative. In 1837 he was Lord Mayor of York, and the same year was made Chairman of the York and North Midland Railway, which was opened in 1839. In

S

1841 he was elected Chairman of the Great North of England Company, and, afterwards held the same position in the Midland Railway Company. He speculated largely in Railways; and in the Parliamentary return, already alluded to (p. 270) his subscriptions appear as £319,835.

He came to London, and inhabited the house at Albert Gate, Knightsbridge (now the French Embassy) where he entertained the Prince Consort, and the aristocracy generally. He was elected M.P. for Sunderland in Aug. 1845, and again served as Lord Mayor of York in 1846. The Railway smash came, and year by year things went worse with him, until, early in the year 1849 he had to resign his chairmanship of the Eastern Counties (now Great Eastern), Midland, York, Newcastle and Berwick, and the York and North Midland Railway Companies. He went abroad, where he lived for some time, and tried, unavailingly, to retrieve his fortune. In July 1865 he was committed to York Castle for Contempt of the Court of Exchequer, in not paying a large debt, and was there incarcerated till the following October.

He fell so low, that in 1868 some friends took pity on him and raised a subscription for him, thus obtaining £4800, with which an annuity was purchased. He died in London, 14th Dec. 1871.

In conclusion, as a place for gambling, the Stock Exchange is of far greater extent than the Turf. The time bargains and options, without which the business of the Exchange would be very little, are gambling pure and simple, whilst the numerous bucket shops, with their advertisements and circulars, disseminate the unwholesome vice of gambling throughout the length and breadth of the land, enabling people to speculate without anyone being the wiser. It is needless to say, that, as on the Turf, they are the losers.

CHAPTER XXII

Permissible gambling-Early Marine Assurance-Oldest and old Policies— Lloyd's-Curious Insurances-Marine Assurance Companies-Fire Insurance-Its origin and early Companies-Life Insurance-Early Companies-Curious story of Life Insurance.

BUT, paradoxical as it may appear, there is a class of gambling which is not only considered harmless, but beneficial, and even necessary-I mean Insurance. Theoretically, it is gambling proper. You bet 2s. 6d. to £100 with your Fire Insurance; you equally bet on a Marine Insurance for the safe arrival of your ships or merchandise; and it is also gambling when you insure your life. Yet a man would be considered culpable, or at the very least, negligent and indiscreet did he not insure.

Of the different kinds of Insurance or Assurance, as it is indifferently called, Marine Assurance is the oldest, so old, that no one knows when the custom began, as we see by the preamble of 43 Eliz., c. 12 (1601).

"AN ACTE CONCERNINGE MATTERS OF ASSURANCES, AMONGSTE MARCHANTES. WHEREAS it ever hathe bene the Policie of this Realme by all good meanes to comforte and encourage the Merchante, therebie to advance and increase the generall wealthe of the Realme, her Majesties Customes and the strengthe of Shippinge, which Consideration is now the more requisite, because Trade and Traffique is not, at this presente, soe open as at other tymes it hathe bene; and, whereas it hathe bene tyme out of mynde an usage amongste Merchantes, both of this Realme and of forraine Nacyons, when they make any greate adventure (speciallie into remote partes) to give some consideracion of Money to other persons (which commonlie are in noe small number

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