652 PANDEMONIUM ; OR, 



numbers is, therefore, one-sixth of the certainty. It is upon this simple 

 principle that all games of chance are founded, and in fact every 

 chance is susceptible of calculation. 



But do time-bargains come under this category ? 



Is it possible we would ask, 1st, to reduce to calculation the influ- 

 ence of the press upon the public funds. 2ndly. Is the complicated 

 machinery of the market itself to be grasped by mathematical ana- 

 lysis. 3dly. Can you measure the rascality of your broker, or cal- 

 culate the operations of great capitalists like Rothschild and others, 

 who by means of their immense capitals raise or depress the funds 

 at their bon plaiser ; and lastly, can the advent of political events be 

 calculated with such nicety as to form the basis of an operation ex- 

 tending from one settling day to another, an interval of only fifteen 

 days. 



But supposing, for the sake of argument,, that this last point 

 were possible that the truths of the moral and political sciences, as 

 some mathematicians have advanced, were susceptible of the same 

 degree of certainty as those which form the system of physical 

 sciences, and even the branches of those which approach mathema- 

 tical certainty, even then, without the possibility of reducing to cal- 

 culation the elements we have enumerated, the results would be 

 equally disastrous ; for there is in this species of gambling one pecu- 

 liar feature which is simply this, that the player never knows the ex- 

 tent of his risk. Thus at roulette, or any other game of chance, we 

 are acquainted with, he only risks the sum actually staked ; but in 

 making a time-bargain, let but a panic seize the market, and he may 

 be ruined before he has the possibility of closing his account. 



Nor are these panics of unfrequent occurrence ; for if there be one 

 thing in the whole range of creation more sensitive than another, it is 

 the heroes of the Stock Exchange. A mere rumour, the absurdity or 

 falsehood of which imbecility itself would detect, will produce in 

 this singular region a panic that will shake the financial world to its 

 foundation. And yet such is the infatuation, such the prejudice of 

 mankind, that many a man who would deem his credit blasted, his 

 moral reputation tainted, by being seen within the walls of a hell, 

 day after day risks his fortune and his happiness in this fatal vortex, 

 deluding himself with the idea that while the habitue of the hell is 

 pointed at by the finger of public scorn as a gambler and a black-leg, 

 the frequenter of the stock exchange, the worst gambler of the two, 

 is, by the besotted prejudice of the age, decor -e with the respectable 

 title of a man of business. 



" Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat." 



Often, as I have lingered on the Exchange, it has struck me, that 

 were the power of speech imparted to the regal statues that tower 

 above its crowded quadrangle, what schemes of deep-laid villany, 

 what tales of human folly and misery, might be unfolded ! How 

 plainly, in the care-worn countenances and shabby appearance of 

 many of its denizens, can you read the history of their lives ! It was 

 an observation of Napoleon, that " two planks covered with a carpet 

 make a throne." With equal justice may it be said now-a-days, that 



