650 PANDEMONIUM ; OE, 



courtezan ; nay, more, in the vestry-room of the church for Protaean 

 like, it assumes every form, and revels with fiendish delight in the 

 wide-spreading misery of its deluded victims. 



To what genus of the human species the stock-jobber belongs,, I 

 must leave the naturalist to decide, contenting myself with observing, 

 that in the whole range of creation, a more singular animal is not to 

 be found. Of him it may be truly said, as of the financier of old, 

 that 



sang sagesse il est sage 



II a, sans rien savoir- la science en partage" 



for without the slightest pretensions either to literature or science, 

 with scarcely the rudiments of an ordinary education, he is in geo- 

 raphy, a Malte Brun in politics, a Tallyrand in statistics, a 

 hnitzler in geology, a Humboldt in war, Jomini. Again 



" II est aime des grandes, il est cheri des belles, " 



for so intimately acquainted is he with the secrets of every cabinet in 

 Europe, that he can repeat every word of Nesselrode's last despatch 

 to the Muscovite ambassador at Constantinople, and describe to you 

 every member of the wily Metternich's female brigade, and even 

 what passed at the last interview between one of these diplomatic 

 Circes and our foreign minister ; nay, more than this, he knew what 

 nobody else did, the secret of our late premier's resignation or expul- 

 sion, and the exact nature of the financial measure the Spanish 

 minister, Torreno, was about to submit to the Cortes ; while with 

 a map before him, he will criticise Rodil's movements in Navarre 

 with all the professional acumen of a Bulow or an Archduke Charles. 

 But this is not all ; he is gifted with the supernatural power attri- 

 buted by the Brazilians to some mathematical instrument in the pos- 

 session of the English mining companies, which had the singular 

 property of discovering the auriferous lode hidden in the bowels of the 

 earth ; for at many thousand miles from the spot, he knows the 

 geognostic character of every mine in Mexico, and with mathematical 

 precision will predict the exact moment they will come into bonanza. 

 Such is the versatile capacity of our English stock-jobber, on whose 

 unblushing forehead the impudens mendax of the poet is written in 

 broad characters, who is vulgar in mind, sensual and dissolute in habits, 

 slangish in language a singular compound of the citizen and the 

 horse-jockey an epitome, in the prostituted modern acceptation of 

 the word, of the gentleman and the blackguard, the bully and the 

 black-leg a being lost to all sense of honour, to all human sym- 

 pathy ; whose sole principle of action may be illustrated by those 

 two well-known lines of the poet 



-" rem facias, rem 



Si possis, recte ; si non quocunque modo rem !" 



The funding system is a political system of such immense power, 

 and has been used in this country for so long a period, and to such an 

 extent and with such prodigious success, that to deprecate its ex- 

 istence would be considered as the act of a madman. Still difficult 

 as it is at all times to predict what may be the ulterior operation of 



